


Shadows in the Fog

by dovetail



Series: Shadows in the Fog [1]
Category: Ghost of Tsushima (Video Game)
Genre: Afterlife, M/M, inspired by Legends, kind of Legends Pre-Canon in the end, very loosely inspired I mean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:59:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26910274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dovetail/pseuds/dovetail
Summary: Instead he wakes up at the feet of a samurai clad in Sakai clan armor."Jin?" he asks, checking himself for injuries that are no longer there."Not Jin, boy."
Relationships: Ryuzo/Jin Sakai
Series: Shadows in the Fog [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2010319
Comments: 42
Kudos: 88





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [danceswithronin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/danceswithronin/gifts).



Death is not all it’s cracked up to be, it turns out, Ryuzo thinks when he comes to. He spent his life thinking that once he's killed, that's it, everything is over.

Instead he wakes up at the feet of a samurai clad in Sakai clan armor: scaly plates, antlered helmet, black mask and all.

"Jin?" he asks, while checking himself for injuries that are no longer there. He’s never seen Jin wear that armor before, but...

"Not Jin, boy."

Kazumasa, Ryuzo thinks right away, somehow recognizing the voice of that man even after all those years that have passed since Kazumasa's death. And just the memory of him makes Ryuzo sit up instantly only to prostrate himself properly on the ground before him, however unwilling he is to do something like this usually in front of other lords. That one is the one true lord he’s ever known, deserving of anyone’s respect. Though Ryuzo concedes that the way he’s thinking about that man is colored with childish wonder and innocence.

But Kazumasa Sakai was killed by bandits, Ryuzo thinks. And yet he’s right in front of him. Ryuzo's head starts spinning at the thought. Afterlife then? He doesn't like the idea one bit.

"You kneel before me like you’re my servant," Kazumasa speaks up from behind the mask. "But my son has just had to kill you because you had betrayed him."

So he knows, Ryuzo thinks. There are many things he expects after hearing that, most of them very painful.

"I've been here, all alone, for years," Kazumasa says instead. "Just me and these _things_."

'What _things_ ', Ryuzo wonders. And then he hears it, a strange shriek echoing all around them. He looks up. The sky is dark and the sun is red and they are in the remnants of a burned down building surrounded by a field that is a sea of flowers. The colors are all wrong in this light though and Ryuzo can't tell what color these flowers are supposed to be at all.

Not that it matters. _Something_ is attacking them. It moves quickly, is vaguely human-like in shape but a bit smaller than an adult, more like a slender child. And there are a lot of them. And even more are coming. Since Kazumasa draws his sword, and it's not the Sakai katana, but some other _strange_ kind of blade, Ryuzo gets to his feet and does the same. He still has his own sword and tanto with him, the same ones as when he was alive. It's just that his katana looks brilliant in his hand, way better than it ever did before his death, the silver on its handle and scabbard so pristine it's blinding.

The things that are attacking them prove to be easy to cut down, the only problem being that they are fast. Their blood is black when it sprays on Ryuzo. Then one of them manages to sink its little teeth into Ryuzo's leg before he hacks it up. Black blood gushes out of Ryuzo’s wound as well when he looks down at it and he feels sick at the sight. The pain is the same as if he were still alive and with a hiss he discovers that he can no longer work through it and hold up his sword.

Kazumasa defeats the rest of the creatures on his own while Ryuzo can barely keep himself upright. Hopefully, this will all end soon, he thinks, when everything around him starts falling out of focus. It has just been some vision of his dying mind, he reassures himself, even while he's overcome by nausea and pain. Then, mercifully, everything turns black.

\---

He wakes up again ( _why?_ ) in a building that's in much better shape than the previous one, though both its shoji doors and its roof are full of holes. The night sky is visible overhead through these and it's both too pitch black and adorned with a red full moon. Still the same weird place, Ryuzo thinks.

He sits up on the goza mat he’s been lying on. There's a lamp next to him and its light is somehow completely normal, the same as if it were in the world of the living and thanks to that everything is its proper color and when Ryuzo just concentrates on that circle of light hard enough, ignoring everything else around him, it almost feels as if he were still alive.

"You're up," Kazumasa speaks up from the shadows on the other side of the room, breaking that illusion instantly.

Ryuzo looks up at him.

He is still wearing the Sakai clan armor, but without the mask and the helmet anymore, and he’s sitting there with his arms crossed over his chest. His face is barely visible in the near darkness but Ryuzo somehow has a feeling that he's still the exact same age as he was when he died. When Ryuzo himself was what? Twelve?

“Don’t let these things bite you," Kazumasa says. "Their saliva is poisonous. There are two of us now, but when you're alone, once you're poisoned, they'll eat you. You'll spend some time inside them, in several pieces, melting away in their stomachs, then coursing through their blood. Eventually you'll wake up whole again. But with the memories to keep."

"What did you do to end up in this hell, Lord Sakai?" Ryuzo asks, thinking how that's what it is then.

He knows what _he’s_ done, but Jin's father? Wasn't he an upstanding samurai?

"I wonder," is all Kazumasa says.

Ryuzo can vaguely recall stories from his childhood about the viciousness of that man. He doesn't know of anything particularly unsavory, though, at least not with any certainty.

"What's there to do here then, Lord Sakai, other than fighting off these _things_ and dying?" Ryuzo asks, not hoping for much. He looks down at his leg, which has apparently magically healed. Even his clothes are whole again.

He's not sure about the level of reverence he is supposed to be displaying while talking to Kazumasa Sakai in this place but when he doesn't get an answer for some time, he thinks that maybe he's said something wrong.

On the other hand, are the two of them still a samurai and a commoner even after death? It’s not like he’s a little boy anymore either, even if Kazumasa himself hasn’t aged in all this time.

"The same things as if you were still alive," Kazumasa answers in the end, “in a way.”

“What do you mean, in a way?” Ryuzo asks, because he doesn’t quite understand. "Lord Sakai," he adds as an afterthought.

"It's all of Tsushima, just empty and in ruin. With a red sun and a red moon at night. It's impossible to leave the island, though. Believe me, I have tried. And I have suffered for it. There are various monsters here, some of which you'll recognize from what you might have heard while alive, but no humans at all, not anywhere. You're the first man I've ever met in this place and I knew you'd arrive beforehand. You can't really die here, but getting hurt is usually more unpleasant than if you were still alive, precisely for that reason. The pain doesn’t stop until you’ve fallen apart into small enough pieces. Then you’ll wake up again, exactly the same as you were before. While there are no humans, there are animals of all kinds. You can both hunt and fish, which is most of what I've been doing here. You can't eat anything though, which will make it feel wasteful. If you try to eat or drink, everything just tastes like ash. You can sleep, which I'd suggest you do as much of as you can. It's a good way to pass the time."

"Have you learnt what's the point, Lord Sakai?"

"You betrayed your oldest friend. You wanted to take his head and give it to foreigners who were invading Japan. I'm afraid that's the point."

"How have you learnt of what I did?"

"I dreamt about you for a while before you actually arrived."

Ryuzo snorts before he can stop himself and immediately hopes that he won't regret it somehow.

"It must have been weird," he says. “We’re not even family or anything.”

"Nothing ever happens here, Ryuzo. I’d say it was _interesting_."

Ryuzo feels strange under Kazumasa's gaze. He clears his throat.

"People in Yarikawa hate Sakais’ and Shimuras' guts,” he observes. “Even after twenty years. I'm too young to know what happened there exactly, but is _that_ why you're here, Lord Sakai?"

"People from Yarikawa murdered most of the Shimura family first."

It feels like talking to Jin, Ryuzo thinks. Apparently they both have this quality, of believing themselves to have always been in the right. Then again, maybe all samurai are like that. Ryuzo has never known any other as well.

"Hunting and fishing, huh?" he asks. ”I could get used to that... And if there are animals, does it mean there are horses, too?"

"Horses." Kazumasa smiles when he says that.

And Ryuzo realizes how he has never seen Kazumasa smile before, back when he was a child and Kazumasa was still alive. How he's specifically heard that Kazumasa no longer smiled after his wife's death.

Maybe time heals the wounds even here, he thinks then, and that somehow makes him the least bit hopeful.

"Horses are a sight to behold here," Kazumasa says.

\---

Horses are black like the night sky or perfectly white or even fiery red all over. That is the color Ryuzo settles on when he encounters one like that, because why not. He finds his straw hat, too, just being carried by the wind one day as he's passing by. The rest of his clothes are the same as when he was alive. Kazumasa doesn’t seem impressed with the way he looks but he doesn’t _say_ anything. He himself is either in the Sakai clan armor or an impeccable black kimono at all times and he’s still so young that his hair hasn’t even started graying yet and it's always tightly wound in a top knot, with not a hair out of place.

Kazumasa doesn't talk much but he's a fine companion, Ryuzo learns, a good swordsman when something attacks them, a better archer than Ryuzo when it comes to hunting but a poor fisherman to even things out. There are still times they spend apart, when Ryuzo is exploring the island, not having given up hope of finding something, anything, beyond the usual things, yet. Kazumasa is no longer interested in that at all, apparently having already tried everything there was to try. He sticks to his favorite places and never goes anywhere else.

Then Ryuzo gets murdered by the things and the demons a few times and as time passes, that makes him more and more unwilling to leave Kazumasa's side. Kazumasa is not that much stronger than him, it turns out, but it's easier to deal with being attacked with two people watching each other’s backs.

Spending time together is also more entertaining, Ryuzo has to admit, though Kazumasa's silence gets on his nerves after a while. He's not Ryuzo's kind of person at all. But it's also not like Ryuzo has any choice in the matter. There's also no way to drink anything, which might have helped under normal circumstances.

One day they are riding their horses through a forest near Omi Village, heading to Omi Lake with their fishing rods. It’s early morning and the sunlight is more pink than red at this time, though the sky is still dark.

Kazumasa likes Omi Village's vicinity the most on the ghost island, Ryuzo knows that by now. And frankly, he isn’t surprised. He doesn't mind either, it's where he grew up after all. Once he’s gotten used to the red sunlight here, these woods have started looking familiar to him and now riding his horse through them feels comforting to him, too.

Kazumasa never goes to Omi Village itself, though. The Sakai estate is still there, Ryuzo has gone to check. It's completely empty and abandoned, surrounded by sakuras in bloom out of season, their white petals colored pink by the red sun. Ryuzo can imagine why Kazumasa doesn't want to see it. Lady Sakai had fallen sick and died there and even after Kazumasa himself died, he's still separated from her. And while Ryuzo doesn't understand how this world they're in works exactly, if he was to make a guess, what's lost is probably still lost forever.

They arrive at the lake and sit down to fish but neither of them has any luck catching anything for a long time.

"There’s something I'd like to ask you, Ryuzo," Kazumasa speaks up.

And Ryuzo is instantly intrigued because Kazumasa asking anything beyond the most mundane of things is a first, even though months must have passed since Ryuzo arrived here, or at least it seems so to him. It’s difficult to keep track of the passage of time in this place, probably by design. When Ryuzo tried counting the passing days with notches cut on a piece of wood, it kept disappearing every morning until he no longer bothered.

"Why are you a ronin?" Kazumasa asks, not looking at Ryuzo and still staring straight ahead at the lake.

Ryuzo is taken aback. He assumed that Kazumasa knew everything there was to know about him from those dreams he told him about at the start, but apparently that may not be the case at all.

"You don't know that, Lord Sakai?" he asks.

Considering it’s because of Jin, Ryuzo thinks that maybe it’s better not to talk about it at all.

"I only dreamed of the time shortly before your death, not your whole life,” Kazumasa says. “When it was already after that battle in which all the Tsushima samurai but Jin and Lord Shimura had been killed. You were leading an army of starving ronin but I don’t know why. I have no way of knowing what happened before that, in the time between then and my death.”

Maybe it's because he’s not _supposed_ to know, Ryuzo thinks, suddenly wary.

"Things just worked out that way," he answers Kazumasa's question as vaguely as he can, though he suspects that he'll actually tell him more if Kazumasa just keeps on asking, if only to keep the first actual conversation he's had in months going.

“I set them in motion myself to work out differently than that," Kazumasa says.

Ryuzo can't help but laugh at that, consequences be damned. He’s no longer afraid of Kazumasa at this point anyway. If they duelled, he might have just won, based on the observations he's made in the past months. But why even bother in this strange place.

“Too bad you died then, Lord Sakai,” he says after he's done laughing. “And didn't get to influence anything anymore. Though I know what you mean," he adds after giving it a thought. Because had Kazumasa not died, Ryuzo's own life would have been different and he knows it well enough. "I would have become your retainer, had you stayed alive. It would have felt natural to me, since you were the one who gave me a chance in the first place and let me train with your son, even if I was a commoner, a son of peasants, at that. And before that, you let the two of us stay friends after we'd met.”

"You were both very talented. And conveniently both born in one village. Training you together was the best option. Why waste an opportunity like that?"

"Why? I overheard you once, back then, arguing with Lord Shimura over you letting Jin spend time with unruly commoners instead of sending him off to his castle already. You earned my respect then, even if I was only a child. The other samurai, not so much. I liked Jin up to a point, because we grew up together. But not as a samurai, rather, I liked him despite that. Other than that, with you gone, I no longer had an obvious choice of a master."

It somehow feels good to be able to tell someone that, Ryuzo thinks. And he's glad for Kazumasa's attention, even if Kazumasa is still not looking at him, seemingly still busy fishing.

"But _someone_ taught you everything,” he points out.

“No one in particular.” Ryuzo shrugs. “I just needed to survive. You were killed, Lord Sakai. And Jin asked Lord Shimura to let me live at Shimura Castle with him when he was moving there to become Lord Shimura’s ward because he wanted us to keep being friends. Lord Shimura only allowed that because you have just died, most likely. And I didn't really understand what that would entail. My family was happy to let me leave. One less mouth to feed and maybe a future for me better than being a peasant. I had older brothers to inherit the farm anyway. Lord Shimura took me in as a recruit, even though I was years too young for that. He might have hoped I’d leave myself when it would become too difficult for me. And I only made it because I happened to be on the bigger side and quite strong. And because there was nothing for me back at Omi Village. Jin cheered me up at times, too. Lord Shimura never became any fonder of me than when I was a child, though. The feeling was mutual. I didn't want to live like that. Not any longer than necessary." 

“I never liked that in him,” Kazumasa says with his brows drawn in concentration. His fishing rod is moving in his hands, something pulling on it. But then it stops and his shoulders slump in resignation. “That he would have allowed a talent like yours to go to waste," he continues speaking after that, "just because you were born a commoner."

"You would have gladly used that talent for your own purposes instead, right, Lord Sakai?" Ryuzo can’t help himself but ask. Samurai are like that, he thinks. Someone like him can't expect any true sympathy from any of them. "I don't know if that makes you any better. In the long run, maybe we wouldn't have seen eye to eye either."

He would have had a debt to pay back to Kazumasa, but once it was paid, who knows.

"I was not encouraging you to train to become a Sakai retainer so you could serve _me_ anyway," Kazumasa says. "I already had my men, even when you were still a child. Sadly the best ones died with me. My interest in you was about Jin. Someone in his position needed all the support he could get. And he had neither siblings nor cousins. You knew each other all those years. And you could have served directly under him, regardless of what Lord Shimura thought of you. He's Lord Sakai, isn't he?”

“He is, in name only. He was practically a Shimura back then. Serving him would have been the same as serving Lord Shimura. Not like he would have said 'no' to any orders coming from above. Or at least that was what I was thinking at the time. And I didn't want to be made his retainer just because we were childhood friends. He didn't really need me. If you considered the possibility that I might have become a better swordsman than him down the line, Lord Sakai, or even one anywhere close to his level, that never happened. And if anything, I wanted to be hired on my own merit. I felt I could, at one point. I tried to. But I failed. It's as simple as that. So, since the point was leaving the Shimura estate and some ronin took interest in me, I left and joined them. And if not for the war, my life with them wouldn't have even been so bad."

It might not have been long, either, he concedes in his thoughts, but at least he was free to do pretty much as he pleased. A feeling he wouldn't have known if he had spent his whole life serving a master. And a feeling the memory of which he cherished once he had no choice but to start serving the Mongol one.

“I never had much to do with ronin." Kazumasa shrugs in a way that is somehow disrespectful because he never does that otherwise. "I don’t know about that. But how could you have not been hired? We’re evenly matched. You are way more skilled than most commoners whom I've seen become retainers. And my intuition about you wasn't wrong. One doesn't just find swordsmen like you anywhere."

“Well, there are a lot of skilled ronin, too, actually.” Or at least there _were_ , before Jin killed all of them, Ryzuo thinks, but he doesn’t say _that_ aloud. "Your son has been way more skilled than me for a long time now, though. We just haven't quite realized that back then yet ourselves. And I chose to duel him to show off. Because he was both my friend and the jito’s nephew. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was actually the worst choice I could have made."

"A testament to that skill of his should have been letting you shine in a fight like that," Kazumasa says as if that's so obvious. But somehow Ryuzo doubts that Lord Shimura couched Jin like that before that duel. "Even if he had to win, as the jito’s nephew."

"Tell him that, Lord Sakai, if you ever meet him again, because he fought me like a mortal enemy, sprained my arm and stood over me looking at me as if he's never seen me before. If he was allowed to, he would have killed me back then."

”So, he lost control?" Kazumasa seems to be giving it a thought.

With the kinds of stories Ryuzo has heard about Kazumasa as a child, disappearing in the woods to hunt down bandits and traitors on his own, only to come back covered in blood from head to toe, none of it his own, he probably knew a thing or two about losing control as well, Ryuzo thinks.

"In a way," he says. "It might have just been the first time he showed his true colors."

Ryuzo feels his own fishing rod being pulled then and busies himself with it for a while. But he doesn’t manage to catch anything in the end either. This proves to be a bad day for fishing, he thinks.

"I doubt I'll meet him again,” Kazumasa says dejectedly when Ryuzo settles back down, which is the most heartfelt confession Ryuzo has ever heard from him. “I never met my wife.”

"An innocent woman who died of illness?" Ryuzo points out. "Why would she be here? She must be in some better place than this. But Jin's drenched in blood all over. We may yet see him here."

"Is that a feeling you have?" Kazumasa asks, looking at Ryuzo for the first time since they started talking, as if that was somehow very important.

Ryuzo thinks how maybe that was what happened before his own arrival here. That first Kazumasa had a _feeling_.

And then out of all the people he could have met again, he met him. He must have been disappointed it was a peasant boy like him, Ryuzo is sure of that. One who went on to hurt his son the way he did, too. And it’s surprising in a way that Kazumasa just accepts him like that. But, yes, neither of them has a choice.

"I don't think so, no.” Ryuzo shakes his head. “It’s not a feeling. It's just a theory."

"I'm not looking up to seeing him again," Kazumasa says, going back to staring at the red water of the lake, which kind of looks like blood from the world of the living but not the one here, which is always black.

“Your own son?" Ryuzo asks, astonished. "Because of what he did? To fight the invaders?”

That seems terribly unfair to Ryuzo, even if he was on the opposite side from Jin in that fight.

"War is war," Kazumasa says, proving him wrong. "It's not about that. It is because of what happened when I died. Has he told you that I had asked him to help me before I was killed?"

"Yes," Ryuzo says. He's heard all about that, actually, too many times to count.

“I asked him, an unarmed child, for help, against bandits who had decimated my men. Good thing he didn’t listen to me and get himself killed, too. And it was not even because I was afraid of dying. I just didn’t want to die yet so I wouldn’t have to leave his side. He had no mother already. Not even any siblings.”

Saying that aloud doesn't seem to come all that easy to Kazumasa, Ryuzo observes, but maybe, after _decades_ here all alone, he needs to tell someone, too.

"So that was what that was about," Ryuzo mutters to himself. "Jin still had Lord Shimura,” he says. “And he so didn’t see your death that way. He blamed himself for not helping you. He thought he was a coward. Even if I always told him that it made no sense. But I’m sure he would have still liked to see you again, Lord Sakai.”

“You think you know him well enough to be able to say something like that to me?”

'He thinks I’m overstepping', Ryuzo realizes, 'as a commoner? Or because he’s Jin’s father?'

But it's a fact that he has known Jin longer than Kazumasa and that unlike him, he had seen Jin actually grow up. And had grown up with him. Even if eventually their paths diverged.

“Jin has changed shortly before I died,” he says, “but up to a point, I think nobody else knew him as well as me. Well, maybe Lord Shimura..."

“Then he must be devastated over your death as well. Even if he killed you when you gave him no other choice.”

“Lord Sakai." Ryuzo smiles to himself. "If you believed deep inside that you had to kill your best friend for something that couldn’t ever be excused, would _you_ have been devastated over his death? Both of you, you just do what you have to do, right?”

Kazumasa seemingly understands what Ryuzo means. And it's disturbing in a way. But just like Jin hadn't felt guilty about what he'd done at Lord Nagao's tournament, Ryuzo can't imagine him feeling all that much guilt after having killed him.

“It is a form of heartlessness I myself did possess,” Kazumasa admits, "but the times were difficult and it had its uses. It was never a quality I wanted to cultivate in Jin, though. When we named him with my wife, it was precisely because we meant for him not to become like that.”

“Too bad then that with the Mongol invasion, the times are as difficult now as during the Yarikawa Rebellion."

'Probably worse, actually', Ryuzo thinks.

"And wherever that heartlessness comes from in Jin," he continues, "I guess it serves him well, too.”

“I understand that. But as his father, I wish he could have a different life. You, as well.”

Ryuzo accepts that, but he doesn't know what to say. In the end, it is what it is, there's no way to change the past. 

“Your understanding is more than he gets from Lord Shimura," he says in the end.

Though he wonders if Kazumasa is aware of what happened at Castle Shimura right before his death, of Jin having poisoned all those Mongols there. For all Ryuzo knows, while they're discussing Jin as if he were still alive, he may be already dead like them, executed for treason, his head shipped off to the mainland. At the very least, it's not very likely that he's still a samurai. But Ryuzo chooses not to say anything about any of that to Kazumasa.

"He would be thrilled to hear that from you, Lord Sakai," he says instead, "if he could talk to you."

“You sound quite fond of him sometimes, Ryuzo,” Kazumasa observes. “Even though you betrayed him. Don’t you hate him for having killed you?”

That is an observation Ryuzo would have preferred Kazumasa hadn't made.

“I forced his hand to an extent myself," he says, which is the truth, one he can accept, even if he wishes Jin would have listened to him and spared his life despite that. "But I do hate him, and not just for that..." Ryuzo thinks how he shouldn't be saying such things at all, not to Jin's own father, who can’t even really understand, because he has no way of knowing how Jin _is_ in the end. "But I also…” He catches himself before he can say entirely too much.

He drops his fishing rod, gets to his feet, whistles for his horse and rides away in embarrassment, because his eyes are burning and he doesn’t want Kazumasa to see him like that.

Kazumasa doesn’t follow him, or at least not quickly enough. When a demon attacks Ryuzo back in the forest, in the form of a pale woman with deadly claws, Ryuzo gets off his horse and draws his sword and thinks that it’s going to be fine. But then a second one takes a bite out of his back while he’s busy fighting the first and that’s it. He’s slain and eaten between the two of them and when he finally wakes up after that in the empty forest in the middle of the night, whole again but tortured to near insanity, he goes to search for Kazumasa and vows to himself to never leave his side again as long as he's stuck here.

Not that he hopes to ever be able to leave this place.

  



	2. Chapter 2

It indeed starts with a _feeling_. Anticipation growing deep inside. Memories of Jin getting sharper in Ryuzo’s mind, which he doesn’t particularly like since that includes the memories of Jin _killing_ him. Then something changes about the air.

“It smells like a funeral pyre,” Ryuzo says to Kazumasa. But it smells like that _everywhere_ and obviously the island didn’t suddenly become covered with funeral pyres all over. There’s no smoke either, just the smell.

They’re riding their horses through the forest around Omi Village again, like almost every single day.

Kazumasa nods.

"Was it like that before I showed up, too?" Ryuzo asks.

"Yes. But the way I remember it, this may still take some time."

"You've been dreaming about Jin, Lord Sakai?"

"Yes."

Ryuzo hasn’t. And he’s a bit disappointed by that. If only because he could use the entertainment.

“I told you once he’d come here eventually, Lord Sakai,” Ryuzo says. Maybe him and Kazumasa being here together in the first place has always been about that, he thinks. And he is a bit exasperated by that. How it's always about Jin in the end.

“You also told me it was just a theory back then," Kazumasa says. "It’s different now.”

“Yes,” Ryuzo agrees. “Are you still not looking up to seeing him, Lord Sakai?”

“I’m more worried about things between the two of you now."

Ryuzo doesn’t know what Kazumasa means by that but he chooses to stay silent. He has no way of knowing what Jin has been doing since he killed him and what Kazumasa might have been seeing in those dreams of his. But if there's something he'll need to find out about that down the line, he’ll find out anyway, he figures, so why bother with it now.

“Is he already dead?” is all he asks.

“Not yet."

“I wonder who will be good enough to kill him.”

“While it might have happened so in your case, Ryuzo, most people are not killed by someone who is ‘good enough’,” Kazumasa points out. “And that includes myself.”

“Then, hopefully he has a good death. Enough time to write a poem.”

Kazumasa doesn't appreciate that and looks at Ryuzo sternly.

Several more days pass, with the smell of the funeral pyre growing ever stronger in the air until it is almost suffocating and with Kazumasa spending most of his time indoors, sleeping or attempting to sleep, apparently desperate to dream. They are staying at Omi Monastery, which has a lot of buildings in fairly good shape, though the giant Buddha statue itself is lying down on the ground covered in moss, looking as if it’s been uprooted decades ago.

Then it happens.

The funeral pyre smell is suddenly gone from the air and for the first time since Ryuzo has been in this place, a storm starts. The sky turns coppery, a beautiful shade Ryuzo has never seen before and the lightnings are golden. 

He goes to look for Kazumasa, finds him inside the building where they have been staying, meditating in the middle of the room. He’s wearing his armor, which means he’s already gotten ready to leave.

“Where is he?” Ryuzo asks from the doorway.

“Somewhere nearby.” Kazumasa opens his eyes, puts on his helmet, gets to his feet and heads outside.

It turns out that the horses are unused to the storm here and have run away. It’s no use whistling for them, they realize after a moment, and set off on foot.

“Do you know where he is exactly, Lord Sakai?” Ryuzo asks. He somehow thinks that maybe _he_ could have an idea if Kazumasa doesn’t know.

“We’ll find him. Either way.”

“Unless something eats him first.”

That hunch proves correct because when they do find Jin, seemingly hours later, with the storm still ongoing all this time, he’s fighting his way through a swarm of demon birds in the middle of a forest, his kunai flying around and the Sakai katana in his hand already black with their blood. He's doing pretty well but the birds are too close to him for him to use a bow to get rid of them, which would be the best strategy. The storm is raging and the wind is pushing the birds around, some of them ending up colliding with trees and falling to their deaths.

Ryuzo has never seen anything like this happening here before either.

“Stay behind for now,” Kazumasa says to him and heads toward the fight on his own. He shoots all the remaining birds down with his bow as he's approaching and then walks up to Jin.

Ryuzo hides behind a tree half-heartedly and watches as Jin notices his father, removes his mask with clearly trembling hands and after being frozen in place for a moment, sheaths his katana and bows before him. 

Nothing he should be looking at, Ryuzo thinks when Jin straightens up and says something to Kazumasa that he can't hear anyway because he's too far away. He turns around and concentrates on scanning their surroundings instead, in case something else shows up to attack them. A fox brushes against his legs, running somewhere, before disappearing in the bushes. That has never happened before either. But the fauna here seems unfamiliar with the storm and is apparently prone to running away from it blindly. 

After some time, the storm passes and it starts to rain. Ryuzo sticks out his tongue as if he were a child, attempting to taste the rainwater, but when it hits his tongue, all he can taste is still only ash.

\---

Kazumasa and Jin disappear somewhere then and Ryuzo keeps to himself, goes back to Omi Monastery and doesn't try to look for them. He stays in the same building as before so they can find him if they need him for anything. He fights off a giant demon spider on his own when it comes for him in the night. Its body is still twitching even a full day after he killed it. Eventually, he burns it down so it'd stop.

It takes a few days for Kazumasa to show up. Alone.

When he does, Ryuzo is sitting on the deck of one of the monastery buildings, looking at a handful of ashes of the demon spider in his hand. They are so sparkly in the red sunlight as if he was holding precious stones.

"Lord Sakai." He gets to his feet when Kazumasa approaches him. "How was the family reunion?"

"Fine," is all Kazumasa says.

"Really? Then maybe this isn't hell after all." Ryuzo opens his hand and lets the demon ashes fall to the ground. "At least not for everyone."

"I told Jin about you being here as well."

"And?"

"You two should meet."

"We should. I'll go to the Sakai estate at dusk and wait for him there." Ryuzo has already thought it all through. He certainly had enough time to do that.

"Why there? The one place where I won't go," Kazumasa observes.

"Because we're adult men and we don't need your supervision, Lord Sakai. Or interference."

Kazumasa looks at him closely, as if searching for clues as to what he might want to do to Jin.

"He's stronger than me," Ryuzo points out. "Stronger than you, Lord Sakai. I can't hurt him and he doesn't need your protection either."

"Fine," Kazumasa agrees. "He'll be there."

He turns around to leave.

"Lord Sakai," Ryuzo calls out after him. "How did he die in the end?"

"Maybe he'll tell you himself.” Kazumasa leaves with that.

So now it’s some kind of a secret, Ryuzo thinks.

At sunset, which is like a sea of red blood in the sky, he mounts his horse and rides to the Sakai estate. It is getting dark by the time he gets there. He has a lamp with him, because he wants that little bit of normalcy afforded by its warm yellow light, though he himself has been here so long already that the light from the world of the living isn't as comforting to him anymore. But it must still be for Jin, who has only been dead for a few days.

Once he arrives at the estate, he lights up the lamp in the main room, where the Sakai armor was being kept in the world of the living. Here it is completely empty and the sky is visible through the holes in the roof. Some sakura petals have fallen inside and are lying on the tatami floor. 

Ryuzo sits down in the small circle of light, removes his hat and waits.

It takes some time for Jin to show up and when he does, the sound of the shoji door opening startles Ryuzo out of half-sleep. Jin is wearing that strange black armor he's arrived in here, with no helmet and no mask. He enters the room but stops several steps away from Ryuzo. His expression is unreadable in the near darkness he's standing in.

“We meet again,” he says in the end. He doesn't sound particularly enthusiastic, as if he’s there only because he has to.

"Not by my choice." Ryuzo shrugs.

"I knew you'd have a ridiculous horse like that in this place," Jin says, referring to Ryuzo's fiery red mount.

A pretty friendly thing to say, all things considered, Ryuzo thinks.

"You got to meet your father again," he says. "And it seems to have gone well, too, right?”

"Yes."

"Too bad it's not just you and him then, huh?"

"I think I understand why you're here as well, Ryuzo."

"Because what? You have some regrets about me, too, after all? But maybe it's not all about _you_."

Who is he kidding, Ryuzo thinks. Of course it is all about Jin, Jin with his storms and his foxes. It is always about Jin.

"Maybe it's not," Jin still agrees. "You were not _unimportant_ to me, or to my father, when we were still alive. And you told me yourself that I was everything you had left before your death.”

"So you would spare my life. It didn't work."

"We're both dead now either way," Jin says, as if it doesn't matter that he killed Ryuzo himself.

"So are all my men. Thanks to you as well. I could be with them now. Instead I have been stuck here all this time with your father. It's not very obvious to me 'why'. But maybe it's just not supposed to make any sense. Who killed you anyway, Jin?"

"No one important," Jin says off-handedly.

"You and Lord Sakai, you will now start keeping secrets from me? Because he doesn't want to tell me either."

Jin comes closer and sits down at the very edge of the circle of light.

And Ryuzo catches himself thinking that he missed him, once he takes a good look at him in this light. And he must be some kind of an idiot, he thinks, because Jin killed him. And he had betrayed him before that.

"There are many things my father doesn't know either," Jin says, "that we both know. Or things that I think he didn't quite understand when he had those dreams of his."

Ryuzo isn't completely sure what Jin means, but he also thinks that if Jin is going to dangle something like that in front of his face, even just _maybe_ , he's going to just take it. Nothing to stop him here.

"Yeah, I imagine," he says. "Or he would be here with us now, guarding your virtue."

Jin seems taken aback.

“Is that what you want to talk about?” he asks.

“Why not?”

It’s been a while since _that_ happened for the last time, Ryuzo thinks, back in the Straw Hats camp, when Jin showed up there once late at night with a hungry look in his eyes. Ryuzo doesn't feel particularly great about having promised him then that he'd help him at Castle Kaneda while coming inside him, considering he broke that promise later, but it was not like he hadn’t believed that himself at the time. All the previous times had been before Lord Nagao's tournament. And every single one was somehow special. For all the random flings Ryuzo had in his life, Jin was not like that. Which might have been one big mistake altogether.

But now, it’s not like he has any other choice either way.

"So that's why we meet where my father doesn't ever go?" Jin doesn't seem impressed.

“No, _that’s_ not why. I just wanted to talk to you in peace.”

"Good, because I'd have to forgive you first."

"Likewise, Jin. But an eternity here could be a lot more entertaining if we put our differences aside and… Eventually."

"You think it's even possible…?" Jin at least seems somewhat intrigued.

"I'm certainly not missing any necessary body parts. And they work pretty much the same as before. Which I guess is unfortunate, if you're here all alone like your father or with only him for company like me. I'm not in a hurry, though. It's been a while either way."

"Not something I thought I'd have to consider after my death."

"What if it's some kind of a second chance, since we fucked up so badly?"

" _You_ did."

" _I_ did. I'm sorry, young Lord Sakai, for even thinking you could have ever done anything wrong." 

'But then, why are you in hell?' Ryuzo thinks to himself but doesn't ask _that_ aloud.

\---

"He didn't die in a fight," Ryuzo says. "That's why you're both unwilling to tell me."

He's fishing with Kazumasa again, except this time in the river at the bottom of the Guardian's Ridge. Pretty far from where they usually spend their time but Jin wanted to go to Kamiagata, since he's still at that stage when it seems important to him to check all the places, looking for something Ryuzo and Kazumasa might have missed. Kamiagata is cold the same as in the world of the living and it's late fall, meaning a full blown winter already where they are. But they have furs and the cold isn’t so bad thanks to that. Fishing under the ice is a novelty at least compared to Omi Lake.

Jin isn’t with them. He set off somewhere around sunrise to explore. Alone. At first Ryuzo didn't want him to get killed and was following him around to help him fight off the monsters when the need arose, but he's since grown weary of doing that. Jin was so good at dispatching them himself that it felt kind of unnecessary anyway and on the other hand, Ryuzo figured that maybe he needed to be eaten a few times to finally settle down.

"Stop asking me about how he died," Kazumasa says. "It's his choice to tell you."

"I already know what he _did_ , Lord Sakai. That he turned to poison, hacked up people to pieces, wiped out whole Mongol camps by stabbing everyone in the back. So why hide _that_ from me?"

"Ryuzo, invaders are one thing. But he had to make some hard choices at the end of his life."

"About fighting off the Japanese who came for him after what he's done? And what? You two are afraid he'd lose his moral high ground over me if I learn what he did to them?"

“Not everything is about you.”

"I'm afraid not telling me things is very much about me."

Jin is gone for several days then, which most likely means he’s been eaten. Ryuzo grows more and more anxious with every day of him not coming back and he can’t stop that from happening to him. His existence here was fairly comfortable, all things considered, he thinks, but with Jin around that's over. At least until they set some things straight.

Jin finally comes back one evening and sits down by the fire with them, as if he hasn’t been gone at all.

“Where have you been?” Ryuzo asks him right away.

They have been waiting for him in Kamiagata, dealing with the snow and the cold for days even though Kazumasa had wanted to leave a long time ago. Ryuzo stopped him. Because he didn’t want Jin wandering around alone any longer than necessary once he came back.

“I climbed Mount Jogaku,” Jin says.

Well, that’s interesting, Ryuzo thinks. Not something he would have attempted himself. Not in the world of the living and not here, especially not in the winter. He was mildly curious about what was there but he was also waiting for the spring to even consider trying to go there and check.

“Have you been there, too, Lord Sakai?” he addresses Kazumasa.

“Once. It must have been years ago,” Kazumasa answers. “But it took me months to figure out how to get to the top without getting killed by the things on the way.”

“I was there once already, not that long ago, while alive, so…” Jin says, as if he needs to explain that gap in performance somehow.

“So, what’s there?” Ryuzo interrupts him.

“I’m not sure.” Jin seems to be trying to remember something that’s just out of his reach. “But whatever it is, it’s guarded by several demons.”

“Then demons are what’s there,” Ryuzo concludes. “You’ve lost to them?”

“There’s something _more_ there,” Jin insists. “It’s just guarded by demons. At least ten of them. And yes, I’ve lost. But maybe if all of us went there together…”

“After climbing up there,” Kazumasa speaks up, “it’s not likely the three of us would win against ten demons.”

“It’s worth trying either way,” Jin says.

That comfortable existence is truly over, Ryuzo thinks then. And he really should have expected as much.

  



	3. Chapter 3

Jin dies full of regrets. At the moment when he was ready to go back to Tsushima to defeat the rest of the Mongols and get reunited with the people he cared about who were still alive, an arrow pierces his head. He falls off the roof. And that’s it.

When he opens his eyes next, he’s in a forest on Tsushima, not far from Omi Village. He’s lying on the ground, surrounded by a raging storm and black birds, and when he touches the side of his head, there is no arrow and no hole there anymore.

The birds remind him of a flock that passed over the sky right after his uncle’s death but as they get closer to him, he realizes that their eyes are red and that they are not merely birds. One flies low and effortlessly rips part of his shoulder off, the armor and the flesh. Black blood gushes out of the wound. It’s a nightmare, Jin decides, and when the birds try to attack him again, he gets to his feet, his shoulder grows back, and he unsheathes his sword and reaches for his kunai and starts to fight. Except he can’t win. Even when the storm helps him by smashing some of the birds against trees with the wind, there are still too many for him to ever defeat. It is a nightmare. But if he’s dead, will it ever end?

Then the birds start falling down, one by one, killed by arrows. Just like he was killed by one.

He turns around in the direction of the archer, half-expecting her, even though the arrows don’t seem to him to be shot as precisely as hers would have been, but it’s not her at all. It’s his father. Wearing the Sakai clan armor, like at the time of his death, except with the mask off. Still looking the same as back when he died, too, not a day older. He shoots down the last bird and puts the bow away on his back.

‘I'm dead,’ Jin thinks as his father is approaching, ‘and so is my father. And maybe we can meet like this for real. Maybe it’s actually him.’

Jin sheathes his sword, removes his mask and bows because he has no idea what else he could do. He feels ashamed, for everything he's done that went against the samurai code, even if it was _necessary_ , for getting the Sakai clan disbanded, its estate and holdings taken away, his father's own grave now on someone else’s land, with no one left alive to care for it either. For causing his uncle's death and for everything he's done at the end of his life. And for not helping his father back when he was killed by a bandit right in front of him, for hiding like a coward instead of trying to save him when he asked him for help. He only straightens up when he has no other choice, the bow having already lasted way too long.

Kazumasa is right in front of him and Jin expects him to be angry or at least disappointed with him, maybe enough to either hit him or ignore him at best. He's been through this already, he thinks, with his uncle. But his father looks at him instead and only seems wistful.

“I know what you did, Jin," he says. "And why you’re here. But…”

Jin has somehow already had a feeling that his father knew everything. And maybe it is better like this, he thinks, because he wouldn’t have known how to explain any of it if he had to.

"I'm sorry, father," he says. He has always wanted to say it to his father and it somehow feels good to be able to finally get to do that.

“You think you have something to apologize for to me?"

Jin very much thinks so. 

Then it seems to him that he sees someone hiding among the trees behind Kazumasa and he tenses up, wondering if it's a friend or a foe. He doesn't know how this place works and he is immediately afraid that he'd be forced to watch his father die right in front of him again, but then a fox runs out from the bushes and Jin decides that it must have been what he's seen. It runs right towards them and brushes against Jin's legs as it rushes past.

"Foxes still like you," his father remarks. "Even here."

“Am I really dead?” 

"Yes."

Jin looks at his father more closely. He seems real enough to him. Then he looks around, at the clearing they're in, the dead birds lying at their feet, the coppery sky overhead. He remembers the black blood coming out of his wound and then his shoulder just growing back. He touches it tentatively and it feels fine. The armor isn't damaged anymore either.

"What is this place?" he asks.

Kazumasa gives him the general explanation. And he claims he has been here for years. The storm ends by the time he's done and it starts to rain. Having just been told that everything here tastes like ash, Jin has a sudden need to stick out his tongue and taste the rainwater to check, but he doesn't do that, not feeling quite ready yet to discover that it _would_ actually taste like ash. He doesn’t want to act so childishly in front of his father either.

They find horses and spend the next day exploring the island, though Kazumasa says that he doesn’t do that anymore otherwise. He also refuses to go to Omi Village, even when they are close to it. But he's overall less gloomy than Jin vaguely remembers him being back when he was still alive and he sometimes even smiles a small smile.

Jin gets used to how things are in this place a bit. They encounter no monsters all day, despite spending it moving around, which is supposedly rare. They hunt for a bit, though there's no use for the meat and Kazumasa says that he has enough hides to last him an eternity already, so they just leave the dead animals behind.

On the second day, they fight off a giant monster bear and Jin discovers that he’s much better at it than his father. He should have probably expected as much, he thinks, but he still can’t quite understand it. He was so young when his father died that his memories of him prove to be very inexact, warped further by years of obsessing over his death and his absence and by beliefs that have been instilled in Jin, in good faith, about his father living on in the Sakai katana or being the wind at his back, something he himself believed in deeply during the war. But from what Jin learns from Kazumasa, he has been here all along. And he's no god and no demon. Accepting that takes some getting used to from Jin.

One thing he remembers correctly from his childhood is that his father doesn’t really talk much. It takes them two days to start a conversation about Kazumasa's death and Jin’s responsibility for it or lack thereof and the conversation only happens because Jin yearns to know what his father has been thinking about it. The fact that they _both_ feel guilty about what happened then proves to be comforting. In the end, his father thinks that Jin did nothing wrong, even while he has been dreaming about him chastising him for being a coward all those years. Feeling so much better while falling asleep that night, Jin wonders if this is hell at all. He sleeps much better here than he did back in the world of the living.

On the third day, his father tells him about Ryuzo.

And Jin's stomach turns at the thought. All he can think about is Taka's severed head hitting the ground and his own powerlessness to stop his death. And just when he’s been getting better about his father... Taka’s fate was largely Ryuzo's fault and that was why Jin had killed him and felt no regrets since, even if he missed him sometimes, which is something nobody needs to ever know. 

Ryuzo in his memories is pretty much split into two people now, one his old friend, the other the one who had betrayed him and had to die for it. And Jin assumed that was it. That he would never have to deal with any of that ever again. But maybe being forced to face Ryuzo is part of his punishment here. Or even the price he has to pay for meeting his father as well.

He has already figured out that there has been someone else but Kazumasa here, since the way he has been talking about doing various things seemed to imply as much, but Jin would have never expected it to be Ryuzo of all people. But in the end, this is hell, so who else did he expect? 

It turns out that his father knows about what Ryuzo did as well. And considering that, Jin can't quite understand why he has been spending any time with him here at all. 

Then Kazumasa leaves to go check on Ryuzo and two demons show up as soon as he's gone and Jin is alone, as if they were waiting for that moment. But they prove not to be all that difficult to defeat.

Kazumasa comes back and tells Jin to go meet Ryuzo that evening. Tells him that it's inevitable anyway, even if it feels unnecessary to him now. And yes, if it was up to Jin, he would have pretended that Ryuzo was still dead and gone forever. 

Ryuzo wants to meet him at the Sakai estate, probably because Kazumasa doesn't ever go there. It feels suspicious but not particularly dangerous. Jin knows he should still be stronger than him, the way this world seems to be working.

The sakuras in bloom around the Sakai estate remind him of his father’s funeral but the memory is no longer nowhere near as painful after he's met his father again.

Ryuzo's sitting in the main room of the estate, wearing the same scarecrow attire as he did when he died, his straw hat lying next to him, even though Jin had it in the world of the living. For some reason, maybe just because of the location, Jin half-expected the other Ryuzo, the one from the time before that, and he is somewhat disappointed. But after all, he is the same as when _he_ died as well. Even though he would have preferred an earlier version of himself, too, one without all that blood on his hands. Or at least without the Japanese portion of that blood.

It is surprisingly easy to start talking to Ryuzo again. He doesn't seem to be all that upset about Jin having killed him. And Jin knows that he can't kill him again, no matter how much he might have wanted to, since they're pretty much indestructible here.

And it is a whole different world, Jin thinks, no Mongols, no war. The past is still there, but things that mattered in the world of the living are no longer such immediate concerns.

Ryuzo already thinks that they should consider sleeping together again.

That is ridiculous after what has happened since the last time and with both of them dead on top of that. But it’s also so much like Ryuzo to be like that. And it at least used to end with him always getting his way. Jin can't help but wonder if it's going to be like that now as well.

After that, his father apparently doesn’t intend to keep away from Ryuzo at all. Actually, he and Ryuzo spend whole days fishing together, as ridiculous as that seems. 

Jin is wandering around, too restless to accompany them. Maybe just because he’s barely arrived here and he still feels the need to explore the island. Strangely enough, once he starts going further away, Ryuzo wants to accompany him and starts following him around. And Jin wonders, if he hadn’t killed him at Castle Shimura, when Ryuzo asked him to spare him, and if they would have somehow escaped from there together, would it have been like that in the world of the living as well? Would Ryuzo have been by his side from then on so _literally_ , even after everything he’d already done? Ryuzo’s constant company feels strange to Jin but it also becomes less strange with every passing day, except before he can get fully used to it, Ryuzo tires of going places with him and goes back to spending time with Kazumasa instead.

In a matter of weeks, Jin goes everywhere but Mount Jogaku and finds nothing but abandoned places and demons. He doesn’t risk trying to get off the island for now, dissuaded from that particular idea by his father. Mount Jogaku is all that's left. So he climbs it. The challenges are different compared to the world of the living but it doesn't take him all that long. Except he learns at the peak that he can’t find out what’s there on his own, even though it seems to him that there is _something_ there.

The fact that he's so sure of that convinces his father to go there with him, without first waiting for the spring. Ryuzo stays behind but when they come back defeated, weeks later, and it seems like he is their only chance of getting a different outcome the next time around, Kazumasa talks to him and convinces him somehow to come along. And Jin is grateful for that, as much as he can be grateful for anything when it comes to Ryuzo. At least he’s helping them this time around, Jin thinks. After all, he might have sided with the demons instead.

\---

Jin’s crawling through the snow. 

It is the middle of the night and an immense red moon is hanging low over the side of the mountain and the snow he is crawling on is sparkling red in its light. 

His leg has been ripped off in the middle of the thigh and he's leaving a smear of black blood behind on the snow as he’s moving. It will grow back, he reminds himself, and continues to crawl. In front of him the translucent blob with many mouths that attacked them lies in the snow, not moving anymore, its mouths agape and its tongues hanging out limply. Good. Ryuzo killed it. 

Not without getting hurt. He’s there, curled up on the ground some distance away from Jin, his insides falling out of him. Jin averts his eyes. Ryuzo will regenerate from that, too, but that must be very painful. Kazumasa is still nowhere to be found and they encountered this thing while looking for him. 

At the glacial pace Jin is moving, in pain as well, it takes him a long time to get to Ryuzo and when he finally reaches him, he has more than half his leg back already and Ryuzo’s stomach is closing up. Ryuzo's hands are at his sides now, since he doesn't need them anymore to keep his internal organs from falling out of him, but they are still covered in black blood. Jin grasps his hand with both of his and stays like that by Ryuzo’s side, lying on his stomach, waiting for the pain in his leg to stop. It doesn't feel unusual anymore to be holding Ryuzo’s hand while they’re recovering from their injuries when his father isn’t around. If the pain is still bad enough by the time they get to each other, he sometimes squeezes Ryuzo's hand so hard he breaks it, but that just heals as well.

They have been on this mountain for weeks, and it is Jin's third time coming here, and while they’re quite close to the peak now, Jin already knows that it will take weeks more, having learned as much from the previous time with Kazumasa. He does better than him and Ryuzo, because he climbs with his kaginawa, while they continuously get bogged down and eaten or fall down and have to climb back up and the whole thing turns into a bloody nightmare. If they don't succeed this time around, they will wait for the spring to try again, his father has told him as much.

“At least we didn’t get eaten,” Jin speaks up when he feels he’s well enough to do that. 

Ryuzo looks at him in a way that indicates that getting disemboweled wasn’t _that_ much better. And Jin doesn't really know what to say.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Ryuzo speaks up some time later and falls back onto the snow on his back, as if he intended to just stay like that forever. 

He must be healed, Jin thinks, because the mountain wind carries his straw hat back to him, the last missing thing, and he catches it with the hand that Jin is not holding. 

Jin is fine, too. He has his leg back. Most of the pain is gone as well, other than the constant throbbing of everything in his body from the cold which can only be alleviated by sitting by a fire. They do not freeze here, because that kind of damage heals as soon as it happens to them, but it still hurts all the time. And for obvious reasons, they have lost any furs that they had with them weeks ago.

“It’s not that much farther,” Jin says, even though he knows how long it will actually take. 

“ _Weeks_ more,” Ryuzo says, apparently knowing it as well. “You do not get eaten anywhere near as much as us, Jin. You think I don’t know that? You're just waiting around for us to come back a lot. And you climb so much faster, and without falling down all the time. And you haven't even been in this place as long as me. You have no idea what it’s _like_.”

"You’ll feel better soon.”

"I'll feel better when I go back down. In fact, I’ll just jump. It’d be more painful but so much quicker."

Jin was afraid it would come to that. His father is more desperate, he thinks, after all those years here, but Ryuzo can only take so much.

"Don't,” Jin says. “We're nearly there. And we’ll need all the help we can get once we’re at the peak. Even if you think I'm doing so much better now. I was there already. I was there with my father. We failed both times. So badly that we had no choice but to go down."

“And you’ll fail again, even going there with me," Ryuzo says, staring up at the sky. "Because maybe whatever is there is just not meant to be attainable.”

“We’ll also never know that if we don’t try.”

“So you’re asking me to help you again, after what happened the previous time.” 

Jin squeezes Ryuzo's hand. He is asking. At the very least, he's doing it for his father.

“Maybe it is a second chance,” he says. “For you to fix what you did.”

“For me. Of course. _You_ still haven’t told me why you’re even here. The least I could expect. Why was your heroism rewarded with this?”

Jin considers telling him. He knows that at this point that is something he should probably do, but he knows as well how difficult it would be to put into words what he's done. There is so much explaining, considering he’d need to start at the point of Ryuzo’s death. And he’s never had to do that with his father who knew everything from his dreams already. And he would rather… not _think_ about it all that much.

“Maybe my father can tell you," he says, "after he’s back.” If he will even want to do that, Jin thinks. But it’s not like his father doesn’t have lengthy conversations with Ryuzo about the past at times, however strange it seemed to Jin when he first discovered that. The two of them get along surprisingly well, in fact, and Jin thinks sometimes about that other reality that never happened, one where his father wouldn't have died and Ryuzo would have been a Sakai retainer and he wonders if he and Kazumasa would have been spending time together fishing in Omi Lake then, too?

Considering what Jin has learned from Yuriko, his father might not have been opposed to spending time with a commoner like that even in the world of the living in the end.

“Why can’t you tell me yourself?" Ryuzo asks. "What kind of terrible thing that is?”

“Just humor me, Ryuzo, it’s not much to ask.”

Jin lets go of Ryuzo’s hand and sits up by his side but Ryuzo isn't moving and stays lying flat on his back.

"What do you expect to find at the peak anyway?" he asks. "Once we get there. If we get there. I was just curious myself, but curiosity is not enough of a reason for me to continue doing this.”

"A way out," Jin answers. He isn't sure if there is one and if there can even be one, but he would have liked it to be that at least. "Maybe. Maybe that's what I've seen there. A _passage_ of some kind."

"To where?" Ryuzo lifts himself up on one elbow to look at him. "The world of the living?"

" _Not_ the world of the living, hopefully. Maybe just to where the others are. My mother, Yuriko, your men, your parents."

"I don't see how all of them would be in the same place. My men weren't saints, you know. And if you think I want to see them again so much, you're wrong. I would have taken them over Kazumasa Sakai back when I woke up here for the first time if I could just be with them instead, but he’s not even that bad and meeting them again isn't worth going through this for me. And I doubt my parents would be thrilled to see me at all at this point. Whatever you're looking for, I'm not looking for anyone, really.”

For some reason, Jin starts wondering if Ryuzo would have been looking for him, had they not been together here already. And it’s a foolish thought. After all, he was the one who killed him and all his men, too. If not for the unusual circumstances, he can’t imagine Ryuzo harboring any warm feelings for him after that. And it should be the same for him, in fact. Taka is somewhere in the afterlife as well, after all, though hopefully in a better place than this one.

"My father wants to find my mother,” he says. “He’s already met me here. It's not likely that anything better than this will ever happen to him in this place. Nothing keeps him here anymore."

Ryuzo snorts.

"Other than whatever he did in Yarikawa,” he points out. “Don't you two realize that you probably can't just escape from here? Ever? _You_ did something to deserve this, too.”

"I did. But it's still worth it to try to see what's up there."

"Maybe to you. And even if you did get out from here and found your mother, would you seriously want to spend the rest of eternity with your _parents_ , Jin? No better ideas than that? There were some women I met back in the day whom I would have taken over my parents, or yours, for that matter, anyday. We're not little children."

Some women. Obviously, not him, Jin catches himself thinking.

Then he considers what Ryuzo said. It’s true that he doesn’t really mean to stay with his parents forever if they were reunited, but, at least for now, there is no one else but them, Yuriko, his uncle and Ryuzo who would have been both really close to him once and dead already.

"Well, my _friends_ are still very much alive,” he says. “I made sure of that."

“You also made sure mine were dead.” Ryuzo sits up and moves away a bit.

And Jin regrets having said that.

“I wouldn't necessarily want to stay with my parents forever,” he gets back on topic because he doesn't want to argue. “I'd love to meet my mother again, because I barely remember her, but after that, I would prefer to leave my parents alone. They do owe me nothing more."

"And then what?"

That’s a question Jin doesn’t know an answer to, not really. It’s true that the _other_ people whom he might have wanted to spend time with are still alive. And he’s doing this mostly for his father, though there is a part of him that doesn’t want to be stuck in this place forever, either, for some reason he can’t quite put his finger on. He knows his friends who are still alive are going to die eventually, in the blink of an eye, in the grand scheme of things. But he doesn’t even want to think about that. And at least for now, there is still Ryuzo.

“Well, maybe...” he mutters and reaches for Ryuzo’s hand again. He wipes the blood off it on his clothes and leans down to kiss Ryuzo's knuckles. It’s the first time he’s doing something like this in this world. 

Ryuzo’s hand is icy cold in his and Jin's breath doesn’t make it any warmer. Because, Jin realizes, his breath isn’t warm in the first place. Probably because he’s dead. He’s just never noticed that before somehow.

He looks up at Ryuzo, who seems to be quite a bit conflicted. Even though it was him who suggested they could do something like this in the first place.

“You’re trying to sweeten the deal, Jin?” he asks. “So I wouldn’t go back down now? I don’t like how cold you are. Let’s go start a fire. Maybe you'll get warmer."

He takes his hand away and looks almost relieved once Jin’s no longer touching it.

Somehow, Jin doubts that he will actually get any warmer. But when Ryuzo gets to his feet, he does the same.

Maybe his cold breath is this off putting, he thinks. And maybe if they tried doing anything _more_ , it wouldn't even be possible. After all, if they kissed, they would only taste ash. Because they are ashes in the world of the living, Jin thinks, and he doesn't like that thought at all. 

Ryuzo starts walking away and Jin follows him. They put in some distance between themselves and the dead monster and then they start collecting firewood, which is scarce, but there. That there is any at all just lying around on the side of a snow-covered mountain, dry enough to use immediately at that, is puzzling, but it's also more often than not guarded by demons and maybe _they_ bring it up here to lure them in, hunting them like animals, Jin thinks. But this time around, thankfully they don't encounter any.

By the time they're done and sit down by the fire, it is almost sunrise and the sky is getting faintly pink in the east. It's the best part of the day here, Jin thinks, the only one when everything isn't bathed in red light. And it is almost serene like that.

He reaches for Ryuzo’s hand again and it's still cold, in fact not any warmer. So is his.

“Fine, I’ll stay,” Ryuzo says when he does. “A little bit longer.”

“Thank you.”

They try kissing then but of course it doesn’t work. They give up and Ryuzo just holds him and he’s not _warm_ but being held is still somehow not unpleasant. 

“I was in love with you when we were younger,” Jin mutters into Ryuzo’s chest. “I never told you, because I was so lost about what I should have done.”

Ryuzo moves him away from him and holds him at arm's length and Jin wonders if he said something wrong again.

“Yes, until you settled on humiliating me in front of everyone important on Tsushima,” Ryuzo says.

That tournament, Jin thinks. Ryuzo is still bitter about it. Always will be.

The fire is burning brightly in front of them with vibrant blue sparks flying around it. Ryuzo lets him go, leans forward a bit, reaches out his hand and puts his fingers so close to the flames that the tips melt off into liquid blackness. They grow right back when he moves his hand away.

“This is what’s going to happen if I try to get too close to you this time around, too.” Ryuzo wipes his hand on his clothes. “We’re not made of the same stuff, Jin, never were, never will. It doesn't even matter if we're dead or alive. You want to do something now, but what you’re going to do is lead us all to a hell worse than this one. And if we do find a way out of here, don’t blame me if I don’t follow you.”

Jin nods. Even if he might have been hoping for something else.

"Just help me and my father get there," he says.

That will be good enough for him in the end, he thinks. Even if he has to admit that it is going to hurt a bit to have to part ways at that point when the time comes.

  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wanted to update on Halloween lol

"He killed the shikken?" Ryuzo, who died having never left Tsushima, can't quite wrap his mind around what that must have entailed.

But there's also only so much he can learn from listening to Kazumasa tell him about what Jin did and while he’s interested in his opinion, too, he’s even more interested in what Jin himself has to say at this point. He excuses himself and goes looking for him. Kazumasa doesn't seem to mind, but it’s worrying that the weather is getting worse and they are all split up at this point.

When Kazumasa came back the previous night, Ryuzo was sitting by the fire, keeping watch. Jin was sleeping with his head in his lap, which was something that has been happening lately, from time to time. They didn’t really need to sleep here and they didn’t do much of that but there was also nothing in particular to do while waiting around.

Somehow, Jin didn’t wake up when Kazumasa showed up. And Ryuzo decided not to move. So much for hiding all the handholding and embraces from Jin's father, he thought, which was something Jin had been adamant about doing. Ryuzo didn't care, not here. It was just the three of them after all. No society to tell them that it was wrong. 

"What are you two doing?" Kazumasa asked, sitting down by Ryuzo's side. He took off his helmet and put it aside. He didn't even seem surprised.

"What does it look like?” Ryuzo brushed his hand against Jin’s cheek and Jin stirred in his sleep but still didn’t wake up. “You know how lonely it gets here, Lord Sakai."

"Here, of course. Except you did it while alive, too."

"You dreamed about that, Lord Sakai?" 

"Not in the sense you seem to think."

"Then in what sense?"

"You know if you hurt him again, I will find a way to keep you somewhere where I will be able to hack you up repeatedly as you grow back those body parts, for all eternity if I need to. I'm not sure if this is true hell, but we can certainly make it one for each other. We don't really need to sleep, we don’t get tired, we don't eat, we can be swinging a sword without end. And without any breaks. Do you understand?"

Ryuzo smiled even though this was in fact scary as fuck.

"I wish I ever had someone," he said, "who would have said something like this in case I got hurt."

"I'm not joking, Ryuzo."

"I know."

Ryuzo moved Jin out of his lap then and onto his mino on the ground, which somehow still didn’t wake him up. And when Jin did wake up some time later, it at least seemed as if he was none the wiser. Kazumasa didn't act any differently around them either and he did tell Ryuzo the whole story when Jin asked him to. Jin left when they started talking.

Looking for him now, Ryuzo is walking through a blizzard at this point and he can barely see anything in front of him. For once everything isn't red, it is white instead. And it doesn't seem likely anymore that he'll ever find Jin. What will probably end up happening instead is he is going to get lost, ambushed and eaten by demons, and then Jin and Kazumasa will have to wait for him to come back and the climb is going to take even more time.

Then Jin materializes right behind him and Ryuzo whips around to face him before he realizes it’s him, with a hand on the hilt of his sword.

"You want to fight?" Jin asks him when he sees that. 

He almost sounds playful, but that's a very poor joke actually, Ryuzo thinks, considering they fought and he died. But Jin is seemingly trying to be nice to him, which is something he has been doing a lot lately. 'Because he needs me', Ryuzo reminds himself. It's just that a lot of the time, Jin being nice doesn't even work as intended.

"I talked with your father," Ryuzo says, moving his hand away from his sword.

"Good." Jin grows serious. 

They are talking while standing in a blizzard, but it somehow fits the mood, though they need to get very close to even hear each other. And while Ryuzo’s face is protected from the falling snow somewhat by his hat, Jin has snowflakes in his hair and attached to his eyelashes. And for a moment Ryuzo wants to reach out and wipe them off with his thumb, but it's also not that kind of moment.

"You killed the Khan," he says instead. Good riddance, he thinks. He can still smell burning human flesh every time he approaches a fire. And it's probably going to be like this forever. The Khan ending up just like him, impaled on Jin's blade, for once seems like appropriate punishment. "You fought Lord Shimura. And you won."

"He forced my hand," Jin says quickly. "I didn't want to fight him at all."

"You left him alive. But after some time, he was taken to the mainland to be executed. And you _followed_? Remember when we were kids, we promised each other that we would leave Tsushima together? We even tried a few times."

"I didn't go to the mainland for fun, Ryuzo. I've seen my uncle die there. Because of me."

"And then you spent the rest of your life running around Kamakura with some prodigy archer from Tsushima whom Ishikawa-sensei used to train, whom you needed to look for in Kyoto first, _a woman_ , until you assassinated the shikken with her help. I do get why you're here now. Though it still doesn't explain how you died." Ryuzo realizes he left before Kazumasa even told him that but he hopes at this point Jin will just tell him.

"She killed me," Jin says. "She shot an arrow at my head when I wasn't expecting it."

"Why? Weren't you two…" Well, she was, from what Ryuzo could understand, a young woman.

And while Kazumasa did his best not to include that when he was talking about it, Ryuzo thought it was pretty obvious that Jin's relationship with that woman, whom he probably also simply needed to help him, wasn’t solely professional.

"I don't really know why," Jin says. "She might have wanted to be free of me. Go back to Kyoto. But she did help me to achieve my goal first. I can't really blame her."

"And I can relate to her even though I know nothing about her."

Jin looks a bit hurt when he hears that.

"But," Ryuzo continues, "wasn’t there another woman helping you before my death, a thief? What happened to that one?"

"Yuna? She should be fine. But I would never want to involve her in something like this."

"But this other one was fine for that?"

Jin sighs, as if he's so pained at having to even explain that.

"I went looking for her," he says, "precisely because I could think of no one else who could help me with this and survive."

It must have been fun for that woman, Ryuzo thinks. Not. Jin Sakai barging into her life, needing her to help him do some incomprehensible things, after she'd somehow managed to leave Tsushima in the middle of the war. Ryuzo is no longer surprised by Jin being unsurprised in turn that she ended up killing him after that. 

"Who would have known, Jin," Ryuzo speaks up. "That one day, you're not only going to thwart a foreign invasion of Japan, but also rid it of its ruler."

Jin doesn't seem particularly proud of that second part. And he shouldn't be.

"You lived for how long after you had done that?" Ryuzo asks. "You have any idea what happened afterwards?"

"She killed me right away."

So, the closure Jin got from that vengeance, if that was what it'd been, was very short-lived, Ryuzo thinks. And then Jin was here. It doesn't surprise Ryuzo anymore that Jin didn't want to talk about what he'd done. Especially when he didn't even know the consequences of his actions.

The time after arriving here must have been more difficult for him than Ryuzo would have expected, though in the end neither of them had died a peaceful death, he reminds himself.

"You think you might have started a civil war?" he asks. "In the whole country?"

Of course, neither of them would know anyway. Not until they meet someone who died later than them. If that ever happens.

"I shouldn't have done that," is all Jin says. “I always wanted to help my people. And that didn’t help.”

Ryuzo agrees. But Jin has grown too powerful, he thinks, while at the same time he could only take so much abuse from that system that used to be so much more benevolent to him than to someone like Ryuzo, up to the point when it turned against him, that’s it.

"After that fight with your uncle," Ryuzo speaks up, "why didn't you just kill him yourself?"

That would have been the obvious thing to do. What would normally be done. And while he, a ronin and a traitor with no honor to speak of might have been begging to be spared before and after his fight with Jin at Castle Shimura, Jin's uncle, having lost a duel, must have been asking for death anyway.

"I wanted him to live," Jin says. "He was my only family left. The only Tsushima samurai left alive, too. All the others were dead. And I was no longer one after my clan had been disbanded. I think he understood what I meant. Because he didn't kill himself. Our own people finished what the Mongols started, killed our last samurai. And for what? For what _I_ did? Won the war for them?"

This is the same Jin, Ryuzo thinks, who had killed him and all his men, because in his eyes that was what they had _deserved_ , too. He decided the shikken deserved death as well, for what he'd done to Tsushima and to him. A scary thought, especially when one could make it a reality. But also a logical one, in a way.

And looking at Jin, Ryuzo thinks how he and Kazumasa, they both have the same look in their eyes when they are like this. Though it only lasts a moment and then Jin starts looking sad instead.

"I haven't defeated all the Mongols," he admits, "out of those left stuck on Tsushima after the Khan's death and the demise of his fleet. I was going to do that, but I died before I could."

"Your father said the mainland sent new samurai clans to Tsushima. Maybe regardless of anything they had to deal with after what you had done, they got rid of those Mongols by now."

"Maybe," Jin doesn't sound convinced. As if it must have been him getting rid of all those Mongols personally.

"Well, there's nothing you can do about that now."

"Sometimes I think..." Jin hesitates, "that maybe I could go back somehow. To finish that fight. Even if I'm no longer _alive_. After all, I was a Ghost to begin with..."

Ryuzo is taken aback by Jin having such thoughts. Apparently, Jin thinks nothing can stop him, not even _death_. And to an extent, Ryuzo isn't surprised. Jin told him that he was looking for a way out from here just to reunite his parents and that he wouldn't want to open a passage to the world of the living but it seems that wasn’t even entirely true. And hopefully this was not going to backfire in some terrible ways, just like Ryuzo suspected it might.

"Don't overthink it, Ryuzo," Jin says. "I just regret it. Leaving Tsushima. Not finishing that fight. Leaving behind everyone I held dear who was still alive. When I went to the mainland, I thought I would go back.”

"After you killed the shikken?"

It was bold of Jin to assume that he was going to survive that, Ryuzo thinks, and not get caught, be able to go back and live on Tsushima after doing something like that.

"It might have been too much to hope for.” Jin still sounds pained about that.

"It might have been. Though you did come back to Tsushima. This one. Do you ever wonder how that archer is faring now? After she's helped you with something like this?"

"She's good at surviving."

That is a pretty heartless thing to say, Ryuzo thinks.

"What does your father say?" he asks, though he's not sure if Jin will even tell him.

"About our clan? Or about what I did?"

It didn't even occur to Ryuzo that the fate of the Sakai clan was an especially important part of the whole thing, but he supposes it was for Jin and his father. And Jin starts talking, so he lets him.

"He said the clan would have been gone anyway the moment I was dead. That it wouldn’t have mattered if I had been a samurai or not at the time of my death. And he said that it was his fault, too. He didn't remarry because of the Yarikawa Rebellion but he could have if he considered it important enough to have more sons. Instead he chose to wait for a more peaceful time and he ended up dying before that. And he said he understood how it was to lose control and do something one shouldn't have probably even contemplated doing."

"You're lucky to have him," Ryuzo says, thinking back to his _earlier_ conversation with Kazumasa, too.

"I know. And I would have been even more lucky if I hadn’t lost him all those years ago.” 

Ryuzo thinks about how Jin and his father might have been fighting the war against the Mongols _then_ , together. And he shudders at the thought. But just like he told Kazumasa once, he would have been by their side, as clan Sakai’s retainer, wearing scaly black armor like theirs, just like he always wanted to as a little boy. And maybe this world is actually some echo of that reality, even if it never came to pass.

"He knows about us, Jin," he says, feeling like this is an appropriate moment somehow. "He knew anyway all this time."

Jin nods.

"I had a feeling he knew," he says.

“Then why did you try to hide it from him?”

“You can imagine.” Jin just shrugs. “It’s nothing one would ordinarily involve one’s parent in anyway.”

"I talked to him. He's not opposed to it. But he also threatened me with some terrible fate if I ever hurt you again.”

It seems to take a while for these words to sink in for Jin.

“Then don’t hurt me," he says in the end.

He grabs the clothes on Ryuzo’s chest, pushes the hat off his head with his other hand, and pulls him closer for what might have been a kiss if they _could_ but ends up being just them standing in the blizzard, sharing the same cold breath.

They do breathe and they do have a pulse, which is how Ryuzo has been fooled into thinking that he felt pretty much normal for all this time, until he got close to someone else who was the same as him. Because Jin is in fact like an ice statue, just softer, and neither the warmth of a fire nor rubbing his skin warms him up at all, Ryuzo thinks, reaching up to brush Jin’s cheek with his thumb. And he does taste like ash when kissed. Which is why they will probably never kiss again.

“We have to go back," Ryuzo says after a while and takes a step away from Jin. 

Jin lets him go reluctantly. But it's not wise for them to be split up for no reason for so long. They have to find Kazumasa.

They do try to find their way back to him then. It stops snowing after a while and it becomes easier to move, too, but still what they find instead is a demon that looks like the most beautiful woman Ryuzo has ever laid his eyes on, with endlessly long white hair disappearing under the snow on all her sides, wearing a kimono that is half see through. Strangely enough, she has a bow and starts shooting arrows at them. Except she doesn’t have any arrows or a quiver with her, the arrows just appear out of thin air ready to shoot.

“They will come armed now?” Ryuzo asks, reaching for his sword. Because that’s a first.

“The closer to the peak, the more often,” Jin says. “But we can take a lot of arrows before we can no longer move. Just don’t let her eat you.”

“This one looks good enough to almost make me consider letting her.”

It’s two of them against just her. No other demons show up to help her. And while Ryuzo is hesitant to do that, Jin just charges at her, taking two arrows to his chest that he doesn’t bother to block or deflect before getting close to her. Then he goes behind her and cuts off her head in one vicious move and black blood coming from her severed neck sprays him and the snow. 

Ryuzo sheathes his sword, having done nothing. 

Jin drops the cut off head and wipes his sword before putting it away, too.

Ryuzo walks up to him.

“She’s not so pretty anymore,” he says, nudging the headless body on the ground with his foot. It is not moving anymore. Which is not a given. Sometimes the things here are more difficult to kill than that. But this one was surprisingly human-like and it died like a human, too.

Jin pulls the arrows out of his chest right then and there. And he just grunts when he does. But for some reason, once he throws them away and his wounds start to close, he seems to be very upset, more so than just in pain.

“Bad memories?” Ryuzo asks.

“Why?” Jin looks at him strangely.

“Because of the arrows. Weren’t you killed by one?”

“To the head. I took three at Komoda Beach. And a poisoned one later during the war. Not to mention all those when I was climbing this mountain the previous two times. I got _used_ to it more than anything. ”

“Then why are you scowling?”

“Because very soon it will be too late.”

“For what?”

“For us to spend any time away from my father without risking us all being eaten.”

“And what’s so bad about that?”

“You’re going to make me spell it out?” Jin grows even more annoyed.

To an extent, Ryuzo doesn’t understand what his point is. If Jin thinks he somehow looks enticing like this, covered in demon blood and with gaping holes in his torso, then no, he doesn’t.

“I’m listening, Jin,” Ryuzo says.

“I want to see if it’ll work. With you.”

“Here? On this mountain? Now?”

Ryuzo is not convinced that is a good idea at this point.

“You said you wouldn’t follow me if I find a way out from here," Jin points out. "So, when?”

Jin has always been strangely persistent about these things like that, Ryuzo thinks, when they were younger. Even if Ryuzo started it in the first place, it was Jin who pretty much instigated all the subsequent times. He got in the mood and it had to happen right then and there and it didn’t really concern him that the circumstances might have been unfavorable. Well, Ryuzo concedes, if they were waiting for them to be truly favorable, they might not have done it at all.

“You said you’d have to forgive me first,” Ryuzo says, "when we talked about it after you arrived here."

“Maybe I don’t have to.”

‘Because you did something unforgivable as well?’ Ryuzo wonders. 'And now I finally know about that?'

“You have a coin?” Making his decision, Ryuzo asks in the end.

Jin reaches under his armor and takes out a small bag with a handful of coins in it. And it’s not what Ryuzo exactly expected.

“You run around here with this on you all the time?” he asks.

“I think we came here with everything we had on us when we died?”

“Not exactly. Your father had no sword at all at first. He found his sword here. And my hat...”

“Either way.” Jin flips the coin. “You,” he says when it lands. He stares at it some more though, as if it could give him a different answer.

“You’re disappointed?”

“It will be the second time in a row.” Jin shrugs.

The previous time had been, yes, in the Straw Hats camp, Ryuzo thinks. Before he had even betrayed Jin, much less before either of them died. It’s almost comical to point it out like that. As if they were supposed to be keeping a tally throughout all that time. Ryuzo certainly wasn't. After he had sided with the Mongols with the rest of the Straw Hats, he knew this was over.

“Luck is a fickle thing, Jin,” he still points out with a smile. “But it at least brought us together again at all.”

Jin hides the coins and they go looking for firewood and a more secluded place, also searching for Kazumasa at the same time. They still don’t find him but they do find a cave. And on second thought, Jin might have known about it beforehand and led them there on purpose. After all, he has been here all those previous times.

They start a fire and take off all their clothes, since it's all they have to put on the ground under them, though Ryuzo's mino is the only thing that truly does anything at all to isolate them from the ground. Ryuzo’s somewhat glad that he can be on top because it must be even colder for Jin than for him. Their bodies are cold, too, but Ryuzo no longer expects anything different, which makes it easier to accept. And it seems that Jin still likes being touched and reacts the same way as if he were still alive and maybe that’s more important than if he's warm or cold to the touch. But when Ryuzo darts out his tongue to taste him, all he can taste is still ash and he can’t bear to do that again.

They have nothing to use to make things easier. So spit it is. Jin mutters it's fine. And yes, any damage of that degree will heal as soon as it happens anyway in this place. When he slips his fingers inside Jin, they stay cold, but they are tightly enveloped by that coldness and Ryuzo's cock does stir with some interest, even though he's a bit sick at the idea at the same time. But this is the kind of thinking that he could have afforded back when he was still alive himself. Now, who is he to complain, when he's dead as well?

Jin may not be feeling all that much of a difference though, because he soon starts to whimper as Ryuzo's working him open. Ryuzo thinks how he would have loved to kiss him while he's doing that, but he has to learn not to want that ever again. What he settles on is nuzzling Jin’s throat instead. The pulse there feels reassuring and makes it all seem slightly more normal.

Ryuzo takes out his fingers once Jin's ready, spreads his legs wider and enters him. It's cold but not bad, and he wants to move, but he stays still because he doesn't know if that feels any good to Jin at all.

"How is it?" he asks.

Jin is shivering under him and he's not sure why. 

"Different," Jin says through clenched teeth. Then he relaxes a bit. "Not in a bad way." His hands grip Ryuzo's shoulders to keep him in place as if he's afraid Ryuzo would pull out. "Better than… not doing anything. Much better."

That's barely good enough, Ryuzo thinks. But maybe that's as much as one can expect here. That it is even possible at all is some kind of a miracle. He starts to move and it does work somehow and Jin’s right, it provides some release of the pent up tension in the end and they do both come just like they would have while alive.

“Not what I would have expected to be doing in the afterlife,” Jin mutters once they're done. “Certainly not with you. Not after I killed you.” He tangles his hand in Ryuzo's hair.

“If you wanted some different company, you shouldn't have assassinated the shikken.”

“It’s not that easy to tell what I wanted…” Jin sighs. "It didn't matter."

They clean up with melted snow and it doesn't even seem cold compared to everything else.

And then Ryuzo smells it. The funeral pyre. He sits up and looks at the fire at their side, thinking that he’s mistaken at first. But no. That smell is unmistakable. And it's the same as when Jin arrived.

Jin seems somewhat content next to him and is seemingly unaware of what's happening. But he also doesn’t _know_ yet what a smell like that would mean.

“Can you smell anything unusual?” Ryuzo asks him to be sure.

“No. Why?"

“Never mind.” Ryuzo certainly doesn't feel like explaining that to Jin in this specific moment.

It is still very cold and maybe it would be preferable to put their clothes back on and start moving again, looking for Kazumasa, but Ryuzo feels very weary all of a sudden, in a way he doesn't remember feeling here ever before. And he doubts it's even because of what he just did with Jin.

He pushes Jin back down onto the mino, which Jin lets him do, though he seems a bit surprised, and puts his head on Jin's chest. Jin is holding him while he's falling asleep.

Then he starts dreaming of her.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if they would realistically toss a coin to determine that. Japan is way more into rock paper scissors now and idk what it was into in the 13th century but they did have coins and they could have still come up with that independently, too.
> 
> As for there being no more Tsushima samurai left, I know Ishikawa is a samurai but he doesn't seem to come from any of the Tsushima clans so he wouldn't count, I guess (though he says he was born in Hiyoshi Springs, but I don't think his whole story was explained anywhere?).
> 
> And if you happen to read 'Now I Can See the Moon', this is an improptu fix-it for their past relationship in that haha


	5. Chapter 5

Jin stays awake after Ryuzo falls asleep because someone has to keep watch. He doesn't intend to let Ryuzo sleep for long anyway. It's not like they need to do that here and he's not particularly comfortable on the cold ground either. A moment is fine, though. It's not unpleasant to have Ryuzo so close, with no clothes in the way, even if he's not warm at all in a really unnatural way, which is only made worse by Jin being the same. Jin could get used to that, though. He already got used to so many things after all, to life at Shimura Castle after his father's death, to Tsushima during the war, to the huge cities on the mainland and finally to this strange place after death.

He runs his hand through Ryuzo's hair, untangling it as much as he can, thinking how soon things like that will be out of the question. The peak is close. And who knows where and with whom he may end up after that. Too bad then that this won't even be enough for long. He already feels himself growing hard again. That part really works the same here as when he was still alive.

There was no time for this during the war either. And contrary to what Ryuzo seems to think, Tomoe was so very much not impressed with him showing up in Kyoto with her bow, which he'd gotten repaired, and her kitsune mask, which was still broken, that she never showed any interest of that kind in him again on the mainland. And even if she had, he still wouldn't have acted on it. 

It's been a long time filled with longing, also specifically for this very man, even despite what he's done or him being dead later. In fact, Jin died like that. But at least he got this bizarre chance to satisfy this longing here. And one good thing about this place is that Ryuzo has just taken him and he's not even sore.

He flips them over, which has the added benefit of waking Ryuzo up, and takes hold of Ryuzo's cock.

Ryuzo looks displeased though about being woken up or about what Jin is doing.

"We should be going, Jin," he says and tries to sit up.

Jin holds him down. And it surprises him how much easier it is to do that compared to years earlier, though it probably shouldn't. Ryuzo used to flaunt the physical advantage by holding him down whenever he wanted but Jin never particularly enjoyed it.

"Just one more time," he says. 

Ryuzo scowls and Jin honestly doesn't understand why he's so annoyed. He would have gladly kissed that scowl off his face, too, but that’s out of the question in this place.

"Your _friend_ will come here," Ryuzo says all of a sudden.

"What do you mean?"

"Her name's Tomoe, right?"

Jin lets Ryuzo sit up then because that's… unexpected, to say the least.

"I started dreaming about her," Ryuzo continues, "the way your father said he dreamed about me and you before we arrived here. And I can smell the funeral pyre. It's really happening. She'll die and end up here."

Jin can't smell anything. But maybe Ryuzo can because he's the one with the dreams this time around. Tomoe is another person with a connection to him, Jin thinks, maybe even that kind of a connection, through death and regrets, but he doesn’t want to see her again. He never knew her as well as he knew Ryuzo or his own father and if she really comes here, it will be very awkward. And painful. Though meeting Ryuzo again was as well, he reminds himself.

"How does that work?" he asks, running his hand through his hair. It's frustrating to have to think about it all _now_. "What's the start point of those dreams?"

"I just saw your death, Jin. You, tumbling off that roof with an arrow in your head. She left your body behind. And I think, if you were found there like that, wearing that armor, it's most likely known it was you behind the shikken’s death."

That's not so certain at all, Jin thinks, and maybe it’s not known it was him at all. That's not how he would have liked the Sakai name to be remembered. 

"And then?" he asks. “Anything more you’ve seen?”

"Then you woke me up. If we are to find out more, I should probably do what your father did before you arrived here and actually _sleep_."

"We have something else to do."

"On the contrary, we should probably go down and wait for her. There must be a reason she's coming here."

"You'll dream about her when you go down after we're done."

Ryuzo relents somewhat.

"I don't want to do the same thing again to you, Jin," he says. "And leave you right at this moment, but…"

"Then don't leave me."

"You want to know why she killed you?"

Jin wonders how Ryuzo could have learned Tomoe’s reasons. What does he see exactly in those dreams and how much is he going to know once this is over? But then he reminds himself that Ryuzo probably still knows him better than anyone else anyway. And that even if he finds out something ugly, having done what he did, he still won’t have any right to blame him for anything.

"I can imagine that myself well enough," Jin says. He's not all that interested in Tomoe's reasons beyond that anyway.

"If she comes here before you manage to leave, you'll have to deal with that."

"I'll deal with it then. Right now I'd rather… You know." 

"You're still in the mood?" Ryuzo reaches out his hand and puts it on the side of Jin's neck, where he must be able to feel his pulse. It's there but it doesn't make Jin any less dead.

Jin thinks how Ryuzo should be able to tell that he’s still in the mood, because he very obviously continues to be hard.

"You're not?" he asks, because, yes, Ryuzo is not.

And Jin can understand him being unsettled by this starting to happen, but he wishes Ryuzo could disregard that for some time longer. He'd help him take his mind off things, actually.

"The way that Tomoe is thinking about you,” Ryuzo says, “it doesn't seem like you slept with her at all in the end. So, who else was there between me and your death?"

"If I tell you there wasn't anyone else, will you let me fuck you?"

Ryuzo sighs.

"When I met you for the first time,” he says, “a sweet boy in pretty clothes who couldn't make a stone skip on water and was on the verge of crying over that, I didn't expect that it was going to end like this."

'Me neither,' Jin thinks, but that's not what he says aloud.

"You taught me how and I learned the next day." He grasps Ryuzo's hand that's touching his neck. “And I never actually cried about that."

He pushes Ryuzo back down onto the mino and settles between his legs. 

On one hand, he thinks, they don't have much time, but on the other it always took a lot of effort to make Ryuzo relaxed enough for this and that was back when he could still use his tongue. Not that he didn't like it. Because it was always worth it in the end. But also bothersome. Ryuzo grows hard easily enough when he starts touching him but that’s just the start.

"What I'm afraid of is it's going to feel like being poked with something made of ice," Ryuzo speaks up.

"Not really. And how come you didn't worry about that before doing that to me?"

"What did it feel like then?" Ryuzo inquires even as Jin is coating his fingers in his saliva. "You're not going to take your time, are you?"

"Once I'm inside you."

"That's a bit late."

Jin moves his hand down Ryuzo's body until it dips below his balls. Ryuzo just seems to grow ever more annoyed as Jin's stretching him and Jin knows he himself isn't like that, that he makes sounds when that's done to him and is at least trying to cooperate. Ryuzo prefers to grit his teeth and make it into a challenge to wring any positive reaction out of him. Which is incidentally just the thing he should be doing to spur Jin on. It's been a long time since this happened for the last time and Jin was once certain it wasn't happening ever again. And just the memory of the sorrow he felt thinking that makes his heart clench.

‘I love him’, Jin thinks to himself then, surprising himself quite a bit. ‘I still do. I don’t even care what he did to me or that I had to kill him for it. Part of me just wants to keep him around, be close to him and do this to him.’ And yet, Ryuzo is about to leave him again.

Once he pushes his cock inside Ryuzo’s body it is both very tight and very cold and that is not how it felt when they were alive but it's not like it doesn't feel nice. Ryuzo wraps himself around him with his arms and legs and finally gives up with the posturing and starts clawing at his back to make him move.

Jin complies, though he does take his time at first. But then he stops holding back in a way he probably never did before and Ryuzo comes under him with a growl Jin can't imagine not ever hearing again. He needs a bit more time to come himself. And when he does he thinks how he doesn’t want Ryuzo to stay behind when he leaves this place. And maybe he would have told him that.

But Ryuzo puts his thumb on his lips. Like an apology for the inability to kiss. Or maybe to keep him quiet.

\---

That time in the cave was the last time they had any kind of respite and Ryuzo's glad to a degree that it took place because the number of demons awaiting them closer to the peak was something he’d never seen before and they started coming armed not only with bows but also swords, naginatas and spears. And it was not fun to get dismembered with those, repeatedly.

There was no time to sleep, no matter how much Ryuzo might have preferred to dream about the world of the living over having to fight in countless fights, getting hurt in all kinds of ways, watching Jin get hurt, too, regenerating from all that only for everything to repeat again. Kazumasa got eaten eventually and it was just the two of them for a time, fighting back to back. Until Ryuzo got eaten as well, his last thought being: was Jin going to be able to wait for them unscathed at this point.

When Ryuzo wakes up whole again after that, he immediately gets onto his hands and knees and vomits black bile onto the ground and then it takes all of his energy just to roll away from the mess and fall face down into the snow . He was eaten by something indescribably awful and just the thought of having been inside that thing in pieces for who knows how long is off-putting enough to him to make him sick again immediately. But he can’t vomit anymore so he just stays like that.

A long time later, he's finally able to raise his head.

It is the middle of the night and a huge red moon is hanging low over the horizon. It’s like this all the time here, he thinks, the days are short and easy to miss. He has to take a hold of himself, start moving and find the others if he doesn’t want to be eaten again, if they are even around. He can't be alone here at this point. He gets to his feet in the end.

The smell of funeral pyre grew stronger since he could last smell it, he notes.

His mind is filled with various vivid images as he starts walking, some of them from his one dream about Tomoe, her getting down from the roof to look for Jin's body on the ground to check if he’s really dead. Once she finds it, she closes Jin’s eyes but leaves the arrow in his head and goes away. That's as much as he has seen. And it’s making him angry now, the way Tomoe has treated Jin, even if Jin might have done things that made him deserve it, and to an extent Ryuzo is glad that she is going to die herself, too, and end up in this place once she’s dead. Even if he himself had once wanted Jin’s head.

It’s all so confusing, he thinks. The human mind doesn’t seem to him to be particularly well-suited to having all these experiences past death. Or even to be pushed to its limits by the war like that. He remembers his men dying of hunger right in front of him and closing their eyes for them himself. He remembers finding some dead after Jin had been done with them, some of them poisoned, some dismembered. Jin is a monster, he thinks, and yet he can’t help but still think about him in other ways, too. He remembers Jin fucking him in that cave, chasing his own pleasure after Ryuzo had already come, whispering soothing nonsense into his ear. It was different compared to the few times he had let Jin do that to him in the past. Jin has changed, in a not unattractive way, in the end, Ryuzo has to concede, even if he’s actually changed into that _monster_. He isn’t holding back anymore. And he’s not done, either, not even after he’s dead. And Ryuzo realizes that he’s never going to stop, not until he finds out what's on that mountain. It’s just a question of: can he keep up? And for how long? And does he want to in the end?

By some miracle, he stumbles upon Jin and Kazumasa sitting by a fire then, two figures clad in black armors and covered in splotches of black blood. They themselves look like demons like that and Ryuzo almost hesitates to come any closer.

“You made it,” Jin says when he sees him.

He looks relieved for a moment. But then he’s back to looking grim. Kazumasa is wearing the exact same expression, Ryuzo notes. He thinks how they already know what’s further up that mountain and that’s why they are like that. Things are going to get even _worse_ before they get any better. 

He sits down by Jin’s side.

“We can now smell the funeral pyre, too,” Kazumasa speaks up. 

“She’s coming.” Jin nods.

“I had no time to sleep at all." Ryuzo removes his hat and holds it in his hands. "I have no idea if she’s dead already. Or when it may happen.” 

He regrets not sleeping to an extent because he has a feeling that those dreams that he didn’t have are lost once and for all if she arrives here before he has time to have them. And he would have loved to find out what’s going on in the world of the living.

“If we fail now," Kazumasa says, "we’ll try with that archer once she’s here."

“You think it’ll be so easy to convince her to help us, Lord Sakai?” Ryuzo asks. “She killed Jin because she had enough of him.”

“We’ll think about it later,” Jin interrupts him. “The three of us may still be enough.”

That doesn’t seem likely to Ryuzo anymore because why would she be coming here then?

But they do make an attempt and eventually manage to climb up to the peak. There are some buildings there, some kind of a dojo, but it seems there is nothing more there, at least at first. 

Ten demons of various shapes show up to face them. In the end, after Kazumasa is eaten and five are still left, Jin tells Ryuzo to go ahead, reach that place that he’s seen before while he’ll hold them back for a while. Ryuzo does as he’s told, because there is no other way for them to achieve anything at this point and it’s already too late for success, with Kazumasa being gone. Ryuzo races past the buildings, pursued by a demon, then two, and reaches a red torii gate leading straight off the cliff. That's all there is there and he considers jumping down, preferring that kind of suffering to being eaten yet again, but once he's close to that gate some kind of a strange passage that is like a rip in the reality of this place itself opens inside it and he takes a look in there and is faced with a man crying tears of black ink.

Then a demon sinks its teeth into Ryuzo's back before devouring him whole.

\---

After that, Ryuzo does not wake up at the peak again. 

When he opens his eyes, he realizes he's halfway down the mountain. And for once, it isn’t the middle of the night, but morning, when the light is more pink than red.

If that always happens and so much progress is lost after being eaten at the peak, he no longer wonders why Jin and Kazumasa went down after their previous attempts instead of trying their luck again right away. He couldn't have forced himself to climb back up either after this.

He feels weird overall, in a way he doesn’t recognize from before. And in fact, he’s so disturbed somehow by what has happened that he can’t make himself get up at all and he just stays lying in the snow for what seems like days. The time of day and night and the weather is changing around him and he could probably stay like this forever, he thinks. And he doesn't think of much else. He could sleep and dream, he supposes, but for some reason, he can’t do that either, no matter how much he wants to, even when he closes his eyes.

Then Jin crawls to his side and grips his hand and that jolts Ryuzo back to reality, though he’s still feeling too weak to move.

“What have you seen there?” Jin asks him right away.

Ryuzo doesn’t even understand him at first and it takes him a long time to glean any meaning from his words.

“There is a passage there,” he answers in the end, not without difficulty with stringing words together on his end. “And…”

He has a thought that he could have jumped into that passage, run away from the demons pursuing him like that. He could have joined that strange man there instead of staying in this place, but then he might have never seen Jin again. 

That was not supposed to be his reason for being unwilling to leave this place, he thinks. But it is what it is. He squeezes Jin’s hand.

“And?” Jin can probably tell how unfocused he is but he’s still trying to get some answer out of him.

Jin looks fine now but he must have been eaten as well, Ryuzo thinks. 

The smell of the funeral pyre is suffocating now, he realizes, even though he’s not sure if he’s been feeling it at all these past few days.

“I had something like a dream after getting close to that passage,” he says, remembering it only now somehow, “even though I was eaten by demons right away.” He doesn't really know when that dream took place and maybe it even happened here, after he'd already woken up after being eaten and has been lying here. He just forgot about it for a time.

“About?”

“Tsushima. The real one.”

“Because of Tomoe?”

“Because of something in that passage, Jin. You heard those stories back in the day, when we were younger, about a storyteller who rendered himself blind by sticking his ink brush in his eyes? I saw someone like that there, in that passage, and later, in that dream. He showed me Tsushima overrun by Mongols and demons. In the world of the living.”

“Go to sleep.”

“What?”

“Maybe Tomoe heard something about that, too, and we’ll learn more. Or you'll dream about something useful otherwise.”

“I can’t go to sleep.”

Ryuzo is still exhausted but he also knows that he's not exhausted in the right way to fall asleep already. Just like he hasn’t fallen asleep for all this time. It won’t happen, he's sure of that.

The idea of the real Tsushima changing into some nightmarish place where Mongols are still stuck but all those supernatural occurrences started happening as well at the same time is very out there and he doesn't quite believe it himself. But that dream he now remembers also somehow felt very real and he doesn't really know what to think.

“Then we’ll…” Jin gets to his feet, not without difficulty. It seems to Ryuzo that he must have had a similar experience to him, actually, and that he feels just a bit better or he’s just forcing himself harder to move. 

Then Jin starts taking off his armor. 

“Hopefully my father won’t see us,” he mutters.

“What are you doing?”

“We’ll fuck and you’ll sleep. I have to know what’s going on there. No coins this time. It’s your choice.”

The idea to have sex just like that, in the middle of an expanse of snow on the side of a mountain, in the red light of the sun, just to put him to sleep, is very out there, but Ryuzo feels his body getting somewhat interested anyway.

"So?" Jin asks. He's already naked and it's not like taking off that armor doesn't take him a long time which, Ryuzo realizes, means that he's probably spaced out for all that time again.

“You,” Ryuzo says, because in his condition he can't see how he could do much of anything beyond just lying there.

Jin seems a bit surprised. But then he smiles.

“Good choice," he says.

He kneels down and takes the swords out of Ryuzo’s obi and puts them aside and then starts removing Ryuzo's clothes. But as soon as he touches Ryuzo's skin, he stills, looking very puzzled all of a sudden.

"You're warm," he says, his cold fingers running over Ryuzo’s chest.

And Ryuzo feels as if he's so warm for real all of a sudden that he's practically burning, compared to how cold Jin’s hands are on him. He tenses up when Jin leans down to kiss him but he lets him do that, for a moment, more out of shock than anything. Then he pushes him away with all the strength he can muster in his condition.

"You no longer…" Jin says. He doesn't even end the phrase and tries to kiss him again.

"You still do." Ryuzo keeps him at arm’s length.

"Sorry." Jin stops trying when he realizes what Ryuzo said. "You don't taste like ash anymore."

Jin still does.

But something up there on that mountain made _him_ more alive, Ryuzo thinks. Maybe what's on the other side of that passage was really the world of the living then. He looks at his own hand but it doesn't look any different. Though maybe… He reaches for his tanto at his side and unsheathes it and makes a shallow cut on the side of his wrist but the blood that comes out of it is still black and the wound starts closing right away. He wipes down his tanto on his clothes and puts it away.

He realizes Jin has been looking at him closely as he was doing that.

"I still need you to sleep," Jin says. “But whatever happened to you… I like it.”

Ryuzo decides he likes it, too, when Jin slides down his body and takes his cock into his mouth. The fingers inside him are easier to accept like that and he lets himself moan with his hand tangled in Jin’s hair. 

Jin seems so proud of himself when he finally enters him that Ryuzo thinks it’s almost funny.

“Once we go down,” Jin whispers in his ear. “I want you to stay with me at the Sakai Estate.”

Ryuzo nods because Jin starts to move and he doesn’t trust himself with saying anything back. Pretty much the only words his mind can formulate are 'feels good, don't stop' anyway.

Jin’s thrusts land right where he needs them and after that thing earlier he only needs a few more to be done. But Jin stills, of course, before he can come.

“And when we try to climb this mountain again,” he says, “I don’t want you to stay behind in this place when I leave.”

Jin is still buried deep enough in him that the stretch burns nicely and while Ryuzo doesn’t really want to leave Jin’s side anymore either, consequences be damned, for now he just needs him to move. 

“I could have already left without you,” he points out, though it’s not easy to concentrate enough to speak. "I'll think about it."

Jin starts to move then, though he seems a bit disappointed, having maybe expected Ryuzo to tell him right out that he'd stay by his side, forever, if need be, but his thrusts are long and languid, not quite how Ryuzo needs them, though with time something uncoils inside him again and he comes with a startled gasp. Jin follows him right away.

“So warm,” he whispers.

He himself is still cold just like before, but maybe once they cross that passage together, Ryuzo thinks, that will change. And maybe what awaits on the other side of it, isn't even worse than this place in the end.

\---

Still not done getting down from Mount Jogaku when Tomoe finally arrives and the smell of the funeral pyre disappears, they don’t make it to her in time and when they finally find her, somewhere in Kamiagata, she is already being devoured by a horned demon with fangs reaching down to its waist. 

Ryuzo and Kazumasa hack that demon to pieces while Jin is just standing there.

By the time they’re done, Tomoe is almost gone.

Ryuzo did fall asleep back when Jin was trying to make him, just in time to dream of her death. Hit with a flaming arrow in some battle, she burned alive. Just like that man Ryuzo had set on fire at the gates of Castle Shimura. It was not a pleasant dream for him. And it must have been an unpleasant death for her, especially followed by nearly getting eaten right after arriving here.

She regenerates slowly because of how severe the damage was, but she’s eventually whole again, right down to the broken kitsune mask on her face, which she removes before getting to her feet.

“Where am I?” she asks. She looks around, notices Jin and eyes him warily. “Is this Kamiagata?”

Jin keeps well away from her. She doesn’t seem to like Kazumasa either, after taking a look at him, maybe because of the Sakai clan armor, and she settles on addressing Ryuzo.

“What is this place?” she sounds pretty calm, considering what has just happened to her. She’s not bad looking either, Ryuzo notes. Though he’s not actually interested, not after what he’s heard about her. Not when he has Jin, he supposes.

He explains things to her. Then he tells her who he and Kazumasa are.

“He killed you?” Tomoe asks then, motioning with her head toward Jin. “And you’re stuck in this place with him after that? Why did he even do that? I was on the Mongol side as well during the war, but I told him some sob story about trying to do the right thing still and he stopped Ishikawa-sensei from shooting his bow at me when I was leaving Tsushima. He most likely saved my life then. And that’s what he told me, too, when he came to me in Kyoto. That he was there to collect an old debt. And yet he killed you? An old friend? Was it just because he thought you were not going to be useful to him ever again?”

Ryuzo doesn't particularly like the way she's talking about Jin, even if she may have a point.

“I caused his friend’s death,” he says but doesn't elaborate beyond that.

“ _His_ friend’s,” Tomoe points out. “That hero of Tsushima only really cares about himself. The whole country is in turmoil because he was so upset about his uncle dying that he assassinated the shikken over it.”

“I saved it from the Mongols first,” Jin speaks up. “And you helped me yourself. You said this world deserved to be set on fire.”

“It did,” Tomoe agrees. “I thought it was just Tsushima. I got fixated on this idea of the mainland being so much better for sure. But it turned out to be even _worse_. It still doesn’t make what we did right, Jin. And it’s probably why we’re both dead now and in hell. Though I don't get why I'm here with these people who only mean anything to you.”

“I can see you’re not happy about ending up here,” Jin says. “Nobody is at first. But you have no choice. Neither of us had one. There is a way out from here though. Through a passage up on Mount Jogaku. We have failed to reach it so far, but we know it’s there. And maybe you are just what we were missing to be able to get there.”

“I thought it’d be clear to you at this point that I’m done helping you.” She is, of course, not interested. “And it’s a passage. To where?” 

“The real Tsushima, maybe,” Jin just tells her, which is something Ryuzo didn’t expect.

“Well, that’s interesting,” she says. “Back when I was alive, I heard that it was no longer possible to reach Tsushima from the mainland, that a storm has been raging over the sea around its shores for months. People said the Ghost summoned the God's wind again to protect it from the turmoil on the mainland. But nobody knew what was actually happening there."

"It might have been attacked by demons, just like this place," Jin says. "Maybe we’d fit right in there, the way it is now. Maybe we are just what it needs to get back to normal, too."

"I don’t care about that place, though." Tomoe shrugs. "Why would I go back?”

“What else are you going to do? Give it a thought.” Jin turns around and starts walking away just like that.

“You want to leave her alone?” Ryuzo calls out after him.

Jin doesn’t say anything and keeps on walking. And Ryuzo can tell that he’s supposed to follow him. But if they all go away and Tomoe's left alone here...

“I’ll stay with her,” Kazumasa declares.

“I don’t need anyone’s help,” Tomoe speaks up. But she knows nothing yet.

“You do,” Ryuzo says before following Jin. That should be obvious to her already, he thinks, since they have saved her from that demon.

She should be fine with Kazumasa though and she's going to get used to things here eventually.

Jin heads south. Ryuzo follows him. They still don’t have horses, since they just came back from Mount Jogaku, and they need to look for some on foot for now. Ryuzo suspects that their destination is the Sakai Estate. 

“You knew he was going to offer to stay with her?” he asks after some time.

“He’s still a samurai," Jin answers. "That’s what he should be doing.”

“Because she’s a woman?”

“Because she needs help.”

“You think she’ll come around, Jin?” 

“She’s not the kind of person who would want to spend the rest of eternity here fishing with you and my father. She’ll be tempted. Sooner or later.”

It takes until spring actually for Tomoe to grow restless enough exploring the rest of the island to be willing to go to Mount Jogaku with them. The peak is easier to reach this time around not only because of the added firepower but also because the weather is more forgiving at this time of the year. They still all get eaten several times and suffer countless injuries but by the time they’re at the peak, they are a team that seems to work together somehow and they defeat the ten demons and head for the torii gate.

Jin grabs Ryuzo’s hand as they’re getting close to it, as if he's still afraid Ryuzo won’t follow him.

“Don’t break my hand now,” Ryuzo says, because it feels as if Jin might.

Jin's hand is still cold. But hopefully, it will be getting warmer soon.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There had been NPC dialogue about Gyozen in the base game before Legends came out (and there had also been Gyozen's Blindfold), that was what Ryuzo was referencing.


End file.
